Aquarius
by Rookey
Summary: When an alien spaceship crash-lands in the middle of some small, backwater town in the middle of Ohio, the townspeople are more than spooked. As soon as the government gets involved in the capture and imprisonment of these otherworldly "visitors", teenage activist Sam Manson is determined to throw a wrench in the system... and flip a couple people off in the process.
1. Firelight

_Update 11/1/15: Reconstructing the format of this fic, making some edits throughout although nothing that major_

 _Warning - Mentions of blood and gore, adult language and themes to follow._

* * *

 _Prologue (Part 1 of 3)_

Aquarius

Firelight

* * *

Well did you see the flares in the sky?  
Were you blinded by the light?  
Did you feel the smoke in your eyes?  
Did you see the sparks and feel the hope? You are not alone,  
'Cause someone's out there, sending out flares.

 _The Script_

* * *

Daniel was running. Bushes smacked against his legs and sharp rocks pierced the soles of his bare feet. Tears stung at his eyes and he was gasping for breath. His loose apparel whipped behind him in the cool night wind as he raced away from the scene behind him.

He could still hear the wailing sound of sirens. He could see the flashing lights around him. He could still hear that harsh _bang, bang, bang!_ of what he thought _must_ have been gunfire.

But Danny didn't stop. His mommy _told_ him to run. So, he would. Danny would _never_ disobey his mommy, especially when she looked like _that._ When she had that desperate fire behind the deep blue in her eyes. Danny wasn't about to disobeying _that._

The little ran until his legs nearly gave out.

He stumbled once; and nearly fell, as a matter of fact. He fumbled over his own feet in order to maintain his balance and a sharp pain shot up his leg from where he twisted his ankle. But the small, six year old boy shook it off and kept running.

He was gasping by now. His forehead glittered with sweat in the moonlit darkness of the forest as he struggled to make his way forward. Danny needed to stop. He didn't remember how long he'd been running, but he knew it was for a long time. It felt like it, anyway. Danny didn't have very long legs, but he hoped this was where his mommy wanted him to go.

Slowing his pace, Danny looked around, fatigue settling in. It was dark around him. The light of the full moon glistened through the trees and they stood like solid pillars of starless darkness around him.

Then, to his left, he saw it. It wasn't much of anything. For a moment, Danny thought he didn't see anything at all. It was a small, shimmering glimmer of yellow light, like a lone star on the horizon. A distant flare, just for him to see. Feeling a rush of unexpected hope, Danny did as his first instinct directed. He ran towards it.

Danny ran as fast as he could manage. He did, but it still felt as though it were a distance a way. When the source of the light finally came into view, Danny realized it wasn't a star, or anything else he thought it was. It was a dwelling.

It was a human dwelling. The bright, yellow-ish light streamed through the tall, magnificent windows that towered high above the young boy's head and for some odd reason, he didn't feel terrified by the sight of it. The soft yellow glow filtering through the windows didn't frighten him any more than he was already frightened. It almost calmed him down and gave him a sense of safety he wasn't quite sure was _real_ \- much less _logical_ \- at that moment.

Danny snapped out of the trance he had found himself in. No, this was a _human_ dwelling. Those lights meant they were _home._ Those were _humans._

Danny backed further into the trees. He needed to hide somewhere, but he didn't want to go back into the dark.

Out of the corner of his eye, Danny caught what he was looking for. The boy breathed a sigh of relief.

Danny didn't know what that separate building near the rear of the human dwelling was. It was separated from the residence entirely and the windows were made entirely of glass. But there were plants inside, so far as Danny could tell. It was filled to the brim with earthly vegetation, and the little boy knew it was either hide in there, or hide in the woods.

It would have been a harder decision if Danny weren't afraid of the dark.

But he was, and at least from the glass windows of that little flat not far from the human dwelling, he could take some comfort in the faint firelight he would be able to see projecting from the dwelling.

Still hidden in the shadows, his hands shaking in fear, Danny crept over to the dwelling-of-glass and slipped inside the unlocked door.

However, he didn't realize that human doors latch back into place when they're closed. He figured the mere thought of closing the door, would in fact close the door, like they always have back at his home.

So when the cracked door rattled in the passing wind on that cool, clear night, it is no surprise it caught the attention of one of the humans inside that dwelling.

* * *

Six-year-old Samantha Manson was sitting at the top of the stairs. She knew she should be in bed, as it was _far_ past her bedtime and she knew it, but Sam forgot to take her medication. She was stuck sitting at the top of the stairs because her parents were talking. She didn't know what about but the little girl was _curious._

She could hear her parents talking in muted, scandalized tones as if whatever they were saying was illegal in some way. She could hear the dull buzz of the local Amity Park news channel on the television. It was saying something about a _crash landing,_ she thought. Something about _survivors_ and _outer space_ and _police force_ and a bunch of other words she missed, misheard, or failed to piece together.

Sam balled the silky material of her nightgown into her small hands before making her way down the stairs. The nightgown her mother had picked for her was beautiful in its own right. It was silky-smooth and it had those lace edges Sam's mother adored so much. Sam liked the lilac color of the gown, but it was far too big on her. She could hardly go anywhere without making a noise, like a cat with a bell around its neck. She was conspicuous, whatever that meant.

"Jeremy, should we leave? My sister's just outside of town, we could get to her in a few—" Her mother's voice was frantic, and it scared Sam a little bit to hear it.

"No point, Palma." Her father's tone was grim, but Sam didn't understand why. "The roads are probably closed. Best just to wait it out, honey."

Curious now, more so than she was before, Sam peeked over the edge of the couch she was standing behind, where her parents were sitting. A large, sixty-some inch television hung from a mount on the wall and on it, Sam could see footage of a gigantic darkened shape pressed against the horizon. It was too dark to make out clearly, but it looked like one of those giant alien spaceships she would never tell her parents she read picture books in her school's library about.

"Mom?" The little girl asked finally. "Dad?"

They both, without pausing the broadcast, turned around and faced her. "Sammykinz?" Palma asked, her perfectly arched eyebrows rising slightly in surprise. "What are you still doing up?"

"I waned to see you," Sam proclaimed deceitfully. She may be young, but Sam Manson was smart, so to the point that one might have even called it cunning. It was a tribute of hers that would come in handy later in her life. "I thought I heard a crash, mommy. I couldn't sleep."

Granted, that part was true. But it didn't scare Sam. Honestly, she thought that _bang_ she heard about twenty-five minutes ago was thunder, but Sam was _never_ scared of thunder. She was an oddity really. For someone of her age, the six-year-old was rather fearless. It concerned her parents more than a few time in the past, and caused the little girl more than one broken finger and/or chipped tooth.

A small smile crossed the redheaded woman's lips. Her face softened considerably, and she looked much younger and much more beautiful than she had previously. "I'm sorry honey," she said, "Everything will be alright, Sammy. Go back to sleep, we'll talk more in the morning. It's past your bedtime." With that, her mother gave one last smile before turning back to the news broadcast.

Sam nodded reluctantly. She began to back towards the stairs, all the while counting down in her head. _Five, four, three, two…_ "Sammy?" Her father asked as he, too, turned back to the broadcast. "Don't forget to take your medication, alright?"

Sam felt like jumping for joy. She _knew_ he would say that. Her parents didn't like it when she forgot, but sometimes they'd remind her without getting upset, so long as Sam didn't deliberately say _she forgot._ If she didn't claim responsibility for forgetting, she wouldn't get in trouble.

Knowing that her parents weren't paying attention anymore, Sam walked to the kitchen, feeling oddly awake for it being nearly eleven o'clock at night.

Grabbing a glass from a cabinet, Sam filled it with water and gazed out the window at the backyard. She always loved their yard. Her house, a mansion by definition, was one of those few lucky establishments that lined the forest. There was a single patch of perfectly mowed grass, several wild and beautiful rosebushes and flower gardens her mother and her painstakingly attended to, and it all dropped off into what felt to be a massive and beautiful forest to the six-year-old.

Sam smiled at the way the full moon lit the dew on the vegetation before something caught her eye. A slight movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention and, on its own accord, her head snapped to examine the source of the disturbance in the otherwise still outside world.

Her eyes landed on the greenhouse in the far corner of her yard. The door was slightly ajar, banging slightly on the frame as a slight breeze dusted past it.

Sam wouldn't have been concerned, but her mother was a gardener and one _heck_ of a perfectionist to boot.

Palma would _never_ leave the door open.

The rational thing to do would have been tell her parents about her suspicions, but Sam wasn't a rational person. At least not yet. So, she did the first thing that came to mind.

Sam pulled open one of the drawers and grabbed a flashlight, and slipped out of the sliding glass kitchen door, taking care to be as quiet as she possibly could.

Her bare feet hardly made a sound as she tiptoed to the greenhouse, having no idea what she'd find there.

* * *

A/N: Heyyy so here's a little fic I've been working on for a bit. To kick this off, I don't claim ownership over the basic concept of this fanfic. I drew my inspiration from Star Crossed, ET, and, of course, Danny Phantom.

Like always, I love feedback, and I love ideas and suggestions. Although I actually _do_ have this kind-of prewritten, I cannot guarantee I'd use all ideas suggested. _But_ they'll definitely be considered.

I self edit my work and I'm _horrible_ at keeping up online relationships, therefore the possibility of be getting a beta is slim. If you feel the need to point out any errors, please let me know so I can go back and fix them. Thanks :)

Peace

\- Rookey


	2. One-Sided Conversations

_Prologue (Part 2 of 3)_

Aquarius

One-Sided Conversations

* * *

Lost from the start, I might as well be on the moon  
Much colder than I thought even in the month of June  
No communication makes ya feel so alone  
All we need is patience, in which I've never really known

 _Daughtry_

* * *

Sam pushed the door open with the heel of her foot. It was a double-paneled glass door, but her parents designed it to be light enough to move at the slightest human touch. Despite the elitist nature both adults possessed, the Manson parents knew how much their young daughter enjoyed the family's greenhouse.

The darkness crept out at her from the greenhouse, like it wanted to eat her alive. Sam restrained herself from reaching for the light switch on the wall near the doors as she entered into the building.

She didn't want to chance her parents seeing the light and using the family's bright flashlight was already risk enough for her.

Sam fully entered the greenhouse and cracked the door behind her. She took a shaky breath.

It was too dark. It was too quiet. But Sam was not scared. She wasn't scared of the dark, she was never scared of the dark. Sam hasn't used a night light since she was three years old, and she most certainly wasn't going to chicken out now. What was she so scared of, anyway?

But even still, Sam prayed that her parents were still watching television.

She upped the flashlight intensity, and the greenhouse was suddenly illuminated with a dull, whitish-yellow glow.

It was then that Sam heard a sound. It was a series of surprised-sounding noises, actually. A startled crash that escalated into another startled crash. A series of dominos that started with one and ended with too many.

Sam just about jumped out of her skin and bit her tongue. She didn't want to scream, though. If she screamed, her parents would _surely_ hear her, and she didn't want _that_ to happen. So, she wasn't _going to._

Timidly, but with an air of determination, Sam stepped forward, forcing her legs to move towards the source of the sound.

It was at the rear of the greenhouse, in the far corner. The corner was lined with dense vegetation and dizzyingly colorful flowers. The nearly overwhelming scent of numerous blossoms and greenery gave another note to the all-around eerie undertone the greenhouse all but forced down Sam's throat.

The girl took a steading breath, feeling her anxieties build with every passing second. Her hands, seemingly of their own accord, began to tremble.

Sam, when in view of that corner - the source of that god-awful crashing noise - pointed her flashlight at it.

In a way, she was both prepared and unprepared for what she saw.

Sam gripped the flashlight with both hands, her eyes growing wide and her brain falling into a sort of overdrive mode she was unfamiliar with. Sam would later come to realize that this was her fight or flight instinct, but seeing as though her legs remained firmly rooted to the spot, despite her internal commands insisting the opposite, it was obvious which of the two instinctual reactions her body chose.

Sitting in the corner, wide-eyed and shaking like a dry leaf in the wind, was a boy about her age. His knees were drawn up to his chest and his arms were wound tightly around himself. His pale skin was dirty and stained with some green substance Sam didn't recognize. His black hair was ratty and disheveled, falling in longish and uneven chunks around his head.

But what took Sam aback were his wide blue eyes. They were this light, glacial color, and they _glowed._ Sam had never seen eyes that glowed before. Her eyes weren't considered that "normal" either, so her mommy had told her, but even _she'd_ never seen anyone's eyes do that before, _ever._

Sam kept quiet, still rooted to the spot.

The little boy looked every bit as terrified as Sam felt and that's probably why she didn't scream, right then and there. His _glowing_ eyes were about as wide as they could possibly get and these bright, luminescent white tears gathered in the corners.

Sam realized he had tear tracks streaking his dirty face and the poor boy was shaking violently at the sight of her. His breathing sounded weird too. It was slow and shallow.

Scared.

"Hey," Sam spoke softly to the boy, crouching down to his level and taking care to keep eye contact.

The boy said nothing and just continued to shake.

"Hi, um, I-I'm not gonna hurt you." Sam tried again, her voice as soft as she could manage. She turned down the intensity of the flashlight. As she did, with a start, she realized his eyes grew slightly brighter.

Did his eyes glow in the dark?

Cool.

"Who are you?" Sam said softly. "Where's your mommy and daddy?"

He just stared at her, saying nothing.

"Are you lost?" Sam didn't know why he wasn't answering. She sat down on the floor and put the flashlight beside her. She tried to look as non-scary as possible by crossed her legs in front of her. Criss-cross-applesause style.

She caught the boy eying her hands, so she put them out where he could see them.

The boy relaxed slightly. Apparently he no longer saw her as a bad guy.

"What happened?" Sam asked, hoping he would answer her now.

He didn't. He just continued to stare at her like she was from another planet.

Sam's brow crinkled. Why wasn't he responding? Why was he in her greenhouse? Where were his parents? What happened to make him so sad and dirty?

Then it dawned on her.

"Cam you understand me?" She asked.

The blank gaze was enough of an answer.

Sam sighed. "You can't speak English, can you? Okay, um, alright. Do you need to stay here?" It took her a moment to realize what she said. "Oh, right. W-wait here, I'm gonna go get you a blanket and stuff. It's… it's really cold in here."

Sam chose not to comment, or really think about, the fact that he looked unaffected by the cold air in the greenhouse. It was unreasonably cold in there, for it being in the middle of June and about seventy-five degrees outside.

She tried her best not to shiver.

With that, the little girl in the purple nightgown slowly stood up, maintaining eye contact and keeping her hands fully visible (she thought that was what you were supposed to do when someone was scared. Sam's daddy said so), and made her way back to where she came.

She held up a finger, the universal signal for "one moment," before turning tail and just about springing back to the house.

* * *

Danny couldn't seem to stop himself from trembling.

That… that _had_ to have been one of the most terrifying things he had ever experienced. As he watched the little girl run back to the human dwelling, that flimsy piece of fabric-clothing flying like a ribbon behind her, Danny wondered why the human didn't kill him.

The last time a human got that close to someone like him, there was a _bang_ and that someone ended up dead.

And Danny _knows_ that's what happened because he was with his parents, not too far away. He _saw_ it happen, and that's when his mommy told him to run.

He tried to slow his breathing. If that human girl wanted to hurt him, like that human did to one of his kind a little while ago, then she would have done it already, right?

But what if she was just getting her mommy and daddy… some older, more advanced humans that _would_ hurt him? But that didn't make sense either. She didn't _look_ like she was going to hurt him. She told him to wait, and she didn't look scared.

That's what that one-fingered sign meant, right? "Wait"? That's what he's always seen it used for. The little girl wasn't afraid, definitely, so perhaps she did in fact tell him to wait. She was shocked, maybe, that there was a stranger in her glass-dwelling, but not scared.

And if she wasn't scared, then maybe he shouldn't be scared either.

The human was weird. He's never seen a human up so close before. His parents told him and his sister about them, before they arrived on Earth, but Danny's never _seen_ one, let alone had one _talk_ to him in that funny, blunt, rudimentary-sounding language.

She was small, like him. Her skin was pale and her purple clothing hung from her neck and arms. Her clothing was weird - where were her legs supposed to go? She had dark hair, a little like his, and it was straight and fell all the way down her back.

Her eyes were weird too, to add to her overall weirdness. They didn't glow, first of all. How did she see in the dark if her eyes didn't glow? They were a weird color too. Whenever he'd seen pictures of humans, their eyes were always brown or green or blue, like his, but hers were purple. In fact, they looked a lot like her clothing.

Did human eyes change color with what they wore?

That would be cool.

Danny entertained the idea until the girl returned.

The girl opened the door and entered. The flashlight shined in his face and Danny blinked. He tried not to tremble, and he thought he did a pretty good job, but his hands were still shaking.

She was holding something, like a folded square of cloth. He'd never seen something like it before and he wasn't sure whether or not to be frightened by the sight of it. Danny, eyes wide and feeling the prickling sense of terror returning to him, gulped.

* * *

Sam stepped back into the greenhouse, blanket in hand. She prayed the boy didn't run off, but she wouldn't be surprised if he did. She would be scared too, if she were him, even though she really didn't know anything about the kid.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief upon finding him still sitting in the back corner of the greenhouse. His eyes were still wide, he was still shaking, but he looked significantly better. He seemed to have calmed down slightly while she was gone and he looked like he dismissed the possibility of the little girl being a threat.

However, he still eyed her warily. Mainly, he was eyeing the blanket in her hand.

Had he never seen one before?

Sam took a breath. Just who was this strange boy? "This is a blanket," she explained, unfolding it slowly. "It's supposed to keep you warm." Sam spoke in a low, soft voice as she approached the boy. He tensed up, staring at her with wide eyes, but he didn't make any move to repel her and he didn't shuffle backwards. It seemed like he was forcing himself to let her approach.

Sam, cautiously, taking care not to make any sudden movements, covered the boy's shoulder in the blanket. When her fingers touched his skin, she noticed with a slight jolt _just how cold_ he really was.

The boy was taken aback. He scrambled to grab the blanket, as if to investigate what was suddenly touching him. His hands ran up and down the silky smooth fabric, before deciding that it wasn't going to hurt him. Slowly, he relaxed and he pulled the soft material closer to him.

He smiled at her. Grateful. It was the first time Sam had seen him _not_ scared. A part of her thought the boy had a nice smile.

"You're welcome," Sam smiled back to him. "Okay, um, boy," Sam started hesitantly, "I-it's getting really, _really_ late. I gotta go to bed. But I'm gonna be back out here first thing tomorrow. You can stay here tonight. Okay?"

The boy continued to stare at her. But he seemed to understand her message, as he shifted into a more comfortable position, as opposed to a defensive crouch.

" _Dankon_ ," The boy spoke for the first time. His voice was hoarse and quiet. Timid, that's the word. " _D-dankon_."

Sam had no idea what that meant. Thank you? Please? She assumed it was thank you. She could see it in his glowing eyes.

"You're welcome."

Sam stood back up and backed out of the greenhouse.

She made her way back to her home, her heart racing at what had just occurred.

* * *

A/N: There you go, that's chapter two! Hope you all are having a great summer vacation so far, and I hope you all have a great week.

Once again, any questions, comments, concerns, inquiries, annotations, opinions, impressions, theories, judgements, suggestions, and just about anything else you can think of are welcome.

Peace,

\- Rookey


	3. It's All Fun and Games

_Prologue (Part 3 of 3)_

Aquarius

It's All Fun and Games

* * *

There is beauty in tragedy  
The heart won't stop beating,  
But the end is a new beginning

 _August Burns Red_

* * *

The sun had barely risen over the horizon before the little girl had left her home for the greenhouse. Sam hardly slept at all; her thoughts kept wandering back to the boy with the glowing blue eyes and the terrified demeanor.

She had so many questions, but it would take Sam far too long to think of them in a linear, list-type fashion, as she would usually do. Instead, she allowed her thoughts to remain scattered and chaotic, but ultimately focusing on one task: get to the greenhouse. Don't get caught.

She finally reached the tall, bulky glass building and quite frankly had a rather difficult time opening the door. Her hands were full of food and a few other trinkets. She had no idea who this boy was, but she figured that he must be hungry.

She managed though, and eventually she tumbled her way through the door and closed it behind her. Sam crept to the back of the greenhouse, just in case the boy was still asleep. If he was even still there. She hoped he was still there.

When Sam finally saw him, she saw that the boy was already awake. He was in an awkward position, pressed against the corner as if he tried to make himself comfortable but failed miserably. The blanket was still in its spot over his shoulders, but he seemed much more comfortable with it than he did last night.

The boy's hair was ratty and his eyes were wide and tired. They weren't glowing this time, Sam noticed with mixed emotions. It was good they didn't glow. They were this glacial-colored blue that you could practically see from space but that didn't mean it wasn't normal. Uncommon, sure, but not _inhuman_.

At the same time, Sam was a little disappointed. She liked the way his eyes glowed. She thought it was cool. Fascinating, actually, but she thought the boy in and of himself was fascinating.

It was why she didn't tell her parents about him.

"Good morning," Sam said slowly. She knew this strange boy couldn't understand her. "I brought you breakfast."

Sam placed the contents in her arms in front of the boy. It wasn't much, just box of cinnamon-y cereal and milk, and a couple of bowls and spoons, but it was enough, she assumed. It was all Sam ate every morning.

"S-saluton," the boy muttered in a tone so low, Sam wasn't sure he said anything.

"Salute-on?" Sam tried. She had no idea what the boy was trying to say, but by the way he suddenly smiled at her and laughed, she could assume she said it wrong.

"Neniu." He said. " _Saluton."_ He waved at her, as if trying to mimic the meaning of the word.

"Oh!" Sam realized. "You mean hello!" The little girl was quick to wave back. " _Saluton,"_ she said.

The boy's newfound smile was contagious.

"Vi estas bizara homo." He commented, although he spoke so quickly that Sam didn't catch any of the individual words.

Actually, the way he spoke was odd in general - it seemed as though his lips were moving, but the words she heard didn't quite line up. It reminded Sam of those old videos she used to watch with her mom, the ones with too much lag and not nearly enough synchronization. It was like her ears were struggling to pick up exactly what he was saying.

Regardless, Sam thought she heard something that sounded like "bazar" in there somewhere, but she didn't know for sure. Bazar meant "weird," right? Sam went with it.

"You're kind of weird, too," She countered, a giggle bubbling up in her at his goofy smile. Sam noticed with curiosity that his canines were a little too sharp, but she didn't let it concern her. His eyes glowed too - maybe he was just different, because there was no way he was _bad_. Sam's daddy always said that _different_ didn't mean _bad._

"Mi ne komprenas vin," The boy said. Or rather, Sam _heard._ The way he spoke really _was_ weird - Sam could have sworn up and down there was more to what he said, but she just couldn't _hear_ it. Sam decided to chalk the oddity up to the ever-growing list of weird attributes the boy had and leave it at that.

But at least he sounded less scared now, and more playful.

"I have no idea what you're saying!" Sam laughed. For some reason, both children found the language barrier much more amusing than they should have, but what could you possibly expect out of a couple of six-year-olds?

"You should probably eat some food," Sam suggested, gesturing to the cereal she had set before them.

The girl took the box of cereal and poured some into both of the bowls and the boy watched her in fascination. She poured the milk and the boy looked so absurdly excited about the whole thing that Sam found it comical.

Sam grabbed a spoon. "You eat it like this," she started, holding the spoon in front of the boy, so he could gauge how to grip it correctly. He nodded slightly, conveying that he understood. Sam then dipped the spoon into the cereal and proceeded to eat it, exaggerating the movements so he could follow.

With a final nod, the boy grabbed his spoon and held it in a fashion similar to hers, although it left room for improvement. He copied her actions and dipped the spoon into the cereal and put it in his mouth.

Then, the boy smiled. He didn't show his teeth, apparently he had the sense to keep his mouth shut while he ate but he smiled all the same.

He chewed and swallowed before saying, in that weird way of his, "Vi estas bona!"

"… I don't know what that means," Sam said with her own smile. "But I think you means it's good?" She pointed to the bowl the boy now held in his hands and nodded towards him. He nodded back, still smiling.

"Alright, then it's good," Sam stated finally before beginning to eat her own cereal. Of course Sam knew it was good, but she was just curious to see if he would like it.

Feeling more comfortable with her newfound friend, Sam suddenly remembered she didn't even know his name. She almost gasped. How could she not remember something as important as his _name?_

"What's your name?" Sam voiced her concerns between mouthfuls. The urgent nature of the question almost made her forget he had no idea what she was talking about. Sam put down her half-eaten bowl of cereal and pointed to herself.

"Sam," she said. "My name is Sam." She pointed to herself again, embellishing the movement. "Me, Sam." Hoping that got the message across, Sam pointed to the boy. "You?"

"Me… Same?" The boy repeated slowly, confused.

" _Sam_." The girl repeated.

" _Sam._ " The boy said, annunciating the word as deliberately as he could. Then something seemed to dawn on him. " _Ho!_ Via nomo estas _Sam!"_ The boy looked as though everything had been made right in the world, that he understood this little girl's statement. Apparently names were very important to him, too.

The boy pointed to himself, smiling brightly. He wasn't wary of her anymore. Apparently, he considered her as much of a friend as she considered him. "Mia nomo estas—"

He didn't finish his statement. How could he, when in that moment, the quiet morning air was suddenly filled with noise and the chaos.

There was a loud ruckus outside the greenhouse, suddenly. Car engines roared, dogs barked, and the sounds of hurried human voices filled the air. Both children jumped, and scrambled into the corner.

" _Code white, I repeat, code white!"_ Sam heard someone yell from outside the greenhouse. She heard the dogs barking louder, and daring to open her eyes and gaze out a glass window she realized that they were suddenly surrounded. White jeeps and vans and men in white suits with their scary-looking growling dogs quite literally _surrounded_ the small greenhouse and it became painfully clear for the children that there was no escape.

Time, for a moment, seemed to suddenly stand still. Sam glanced at the mysterious boy. She was hoping, for some reason, that his eyes were closed. If he was scared of _her_ , somehow Sam knew he would be _terrified_ of all the big scary adults outside.

But his eyes were open. He was staring wide-eyed at the people outside and their cars and their dogs and their… their _guns?!_

The boy was terrified. His eyes were glowing this strange shade of cyan that Sam almost dared say bordered on green.

Almost.

It was when Sam positioned herself in front of the boy when time suddenly sped up, and everything happened at once.

The doors of the greenhouse burst open with a resounding _bang!_ that shattered the glass. Men in white suits marched into the small greenhouse in droves, all pointing bright green, glowing guns at the two cowering children on the ground.

Vaguely, Sam heard the distant cries of her mother and the enraged shouting of her father outside of the greenhouse over the chaos.

"Surrender now, ghost, or we will open fire!" One man yelled, directly pointing one of those shiny guns at the little boy. Well, he tried to. Sam pushed herself so that she was in the way. She would _not_ let these mean, strange men hurt her friend.

The boy stared at Sam with wide eyes, as if trying to convey some sort of secret message or trying to sort through a barrage of new emotions the six-year-old had never experienced before.

All at once, his conflicted expression hardened into a mask of determination. The boy pushed Sam away from him and stood up. He held his chin high and stood in front of Sam protectively.

It didn't take a mind reader to figure out what the dark-haired boy was thinking. _Don't touch her._

The air around everyone in the greenhouse grew tense and silent. The little boy was staring down grown men with firearms while the little girl was still on the ground, shocked by the turn of events.

An untold amount of time passed before one man suddenly took a step towards the boy and, surprised, the boy thrust a hand out in front of him defensively.

But that one sudden movement on his part was all it took for Sam's innocence to melt away.

Numerous _bangs!_ echoed through the morning air as several bright green beams collided with the boy, most of which _pointblank_.

It took Sam a second to register what happened.

Suddenly, with wide eyes and a generally shocked expression adorning the little boy's face, he fell face first onto the floor of the greenhouse. Bright green liquid leaked through several parts of his lose gray clothing and pooled around him like blood on the floor.

Sam, with a jolt, suddenly realized the harsh reality of what had happened.

The little boy wasn't moving.

Her friend was _dead._

It was then that Sam Manson began to wail, as her parents rushed to carry her from the scene and those men in white suits took the boy away.

And a whole decade would come to pass before Sam Manson would see that mysterious boy again.

* * *

A/N: Alright, so that was chapter three, questions will hopefully be answered later - including questions about the language. They speak a language _called_ Esperanto. It _looks_ like Esperanto on paper, but hearing it and speaking it are completely different. You aren't supposed to be able to translate it.

And _"ghost"_ is what people use instead of "alien/extraterrestrial."

Questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, demands, inquiries, yada, yada, yada are all welcome. In fact, I _implore_ you to drop some feedback on your way back to the world of fan fiction. Thanks for reading!

Peace,

\- Rookey


	4. What a Wonderful World

Aquarius

What a Wonderful World

 _10 years later_

* * *

I see trees of green, red roses, too,  
I see them bloom, for me and you  
And I think to myself  
What a wonderful world.

 _Louis Armstrong_

* * *

It was the year 2025, and the small town of Amity Park, Ohio had never been better.

Well, let's be clear in saying that this town wasn't _small._ It was a small town originally, with a total of five streetlights and a solid four hundred people - with a primarily upperclass demographic on the outskirts a gargantuan forest. There was a single gas pump, and a sheriffs office, if memory served correct. There was a killer diner on a street corner that a passerby or two would stumble upon and then forget about an hour later.

Nothing ever happened here. Once in a blue moon, Old Man Rodgers (who has long since passed - may he rest in peace) would rear-end some snooty rich couple's sports car with his five-thousand pound, solid steel pickup truck, seemingly on "accident." It never failed to make the local news, until the old man finally croaked on one fateful Tuesday night and no one was ever really sure how.

The town proceeded to run his story for weeks following the death.

As Rodgers was the only viable source of town drama, the only other notable thing to happen in this town happened just weeks prior to the Great Crash.

A snail crossed the road near the capital building. It made it _all_ the way across and only barely managed to get away with not being hit by a truck passing by. The city proclaimed that the survival of the snail was a sort-of metaphor for the town, and thus that day was declared a holiday.

To put it simply: a little over a decade ago, the people of Amity Park were _bored._

It was a damn good thing Amity Park wasn't so _small_ anymore.

Ever since the Great Crash and over the course of the last ten years, Amity Park became one of the nation's biggest and most successful cities. As one can imagine, it was a huge jump for the town of three-hundred-ninty-nine. When small shoppes turned into skyscrapers, and the vast uninhabited forests became industrialized and thrown into the next technological century, citizens were more than a little shocked.

To everyones surprise, or given the circumstance, lack thereof, Amity Park became a major tourist destination, and the town-turned-city had visitors from all over the world roll in just about every day of the week.

The town's council was even discussing the opening of an international airport just outside of town, but the idea was quickly shut down due to the proximity of Columbus, the state's capital, and the security procedures necessary to proceed with the idea.

And just like the city, the residents grew too.

That is where this story actually starts: on the streets of Amity Park, where a not-so-little girl sat under a gigantic maple tree in the local park, reading quietly as the day passed around her, unnoticed. Well, one would have thought she was reading at first glance. Until one realized that her eyes were closed and her breathing was deep and even.

That is, until the roaring sound of an armed white Hummer passing by jolted said girl from her slumber.

Sam jerked awake, her eyes wide and her muscles corded in surprise. Upon noticing that no threat presented itself before her, Sam yawned and stretched and put her book aside.

"Wow," Sam Manson commented to herself, cracking her knuckles. She sat up straight. "How… how long've I been out?" Eyebrows crinkling, Sam pulled out her cellphone and glanced at it. She gasped in surprise. "Two and a half hours?!"

No, no, no, that wasn't good at _all_. If Sam were allowed off the property, she was to check in every two hours on the dot. And here she was, two hours and a half hours since her last check in and she was still across town.

Sam bolted into a standing position and she hastily placed her book back into her backpack. The girl grabbed her water bottle and with that, took off in a run.

When one says that Amity Park did some growing over the past decade, they would not be kidding. Two-story shops turned into skyscrapers and they towered over Sam's head as she bolted past them, her combat boots splashing in the puddles of leftover rainwater from a storm that had only just passed.

She ran along the sidewalk, shoving past bystanders with hasty apologies thrown every which way. It was in times like these that Sam thanked the heavens that she had grown to be quite athletic over the past six months. At least slightly. But even if she wasn't, Sam knew these streets well enough that she could run them backwards.

She's done it before.

Sam sprinted past buildings, restaurants, streets, and even through traffic on one occasion – a rather baffled owner of a navy-colored sedan honked angrily at her as she sprinted past his car.

But there was a moment when Sam slowed down. On the Saint Elms Bridge, to be exact. It was one of the few places connecting the East End of Amity Park to the West End; where the fast-running stream water that fed directly from Lake Eerie rushed down the incline on which Amity Park was precariously located, flowed freely.

Sam slowed to a stop and gazed at the West End of Amity Park.

The West End was far less urbanized than the East. There were certainly more houses and human-service institutions like hospitals in the West, whereas the East housed most of the city's skyscrapers, restaurants, businesses, and the majority of the night life.

Despite the lively advantages and vivid colors of the East, located in the West End was what made Amity Park so famous.

Sam could see it from there, on Saint Elms Bridge. She could see that tall, monstrous silver skyscraper that lay waste to the far north of the West End. It was placed at an awkward incline, like the Tower of Piazza in a sense, but it didn't look quite so elegant, nor as stable.

In fact, the "skyscraper" wasn't even a building at all. It was a ship, actually. A spaceship. And it didn't come from Earth.

It was the cause of the Great Crash.

The spaceship was deteriorating more and more with every passing year, and it was sad for Sam to see. But it wasn't what Sam stopped to gaze at, despite the excellent view. No, in fact, what she stopped to see was not too far away from where she stood, maybe to the northeast of the spaceship-made-tourist-acctaction.

What she was _really_ looking at was a four-story tall, concrete, ugly-looking compound surrounded by a ten-foot-tall, chain-linked electric fence. The whole thing had to be the size of about twenty football fields, and was designed like a prison. If Sam didn't already know what was on the inside, she would have no idea what lay beyond the walls.

But then again, _everyone_ knew what was on the inside. It wasn't, by any means, a secret.

She'd never been on the inside of the prison herself, but she's seen the widely publicized, low to the ground bunkers on the inside and the ratty, industrialized excuse for a society attempting to thrive from her television.

The efforts made by the government to keep this place locked up were ridiculous. There were countless security measures taken in order to get in and out, those atrocious walls and fences, and something else the Guys in White added to the mix rather recently - about six months ago, to be exact.

Even from here, Sam could see it. There was a slight greenish hue about the compound. It shimmered in the light and created something that looked a lot like a dome that coated the whole site. A shield. Sam scoffed at the sight of it.

White vans, jeeps, and Hummers like the one that woke her from her slumber paraded around with guns mounted on the roofs and bars on the windows. Bulky men in white suits scurried about the compound with massive guns adorning their persons.

The sight of the military base being so close to the hospital where she took residence made her sick to her stomach. In fact, the very _existence_ of the military base made her want to vomit.

Human beings were cruel and vile, sometimes. Sam almost hated being a part of a society that orchestrated this kind of oppression.

Sam had half a mind to sit outside that fence and protest until they arrested her. She wanted to stir the pot and maybe jostle the citizens of Amity Park out of their illusion of safety and realize the actual oppression they were enforcing onto an entire group of people. A whole _species!_

This species, which people have been calling "ghosts" since day one for reasons Sam wasn't quite sure of, were the people aboard that gigantic spaceship that now lay waste on the northern horizon.

From what she gathered, being only six at the time and not understanding the entirety of the situation until it was explained to her some years later, the initial arrival of the ghosts was violent in nature. Well, more accurately the _crash_ _itself_ was violent, as with the nature of any other crash.

Naturally, the federal government immediately took action to ensure the "safety" of the American people, thinking the crash was orchestrated purposefully and with the intent to kill the people of Earth - as the ship originated from somewhere unrecognizable on any database anywhere in the world.

Of course, Sam found this reasoning to be extremely illogical and irrational. She personally believed the Guys in White, a sub-section of the federal government specializing in non-human affairs, was looking for an excuse affirm their relevance and assert control over _something_.

Many people, like Sam, believed the ghosts meant no harm in their arrival. The violent nature of the crash was nothing more than an accident that could be throughly described by a passenger aboard the ship at the time, if given the chance to explain.

But of course, instead of letting them _explain_ their sides of the story, the Guys in White and the rest of that useless group of over-dressed government officials took immediate action and maimed, captured, or killed any ghosts they could get their hands on, on the day of the Great Crash.

Then, they built that compound as a prison for them - a containment sector dubbed by the citizens of Amity Park as the "Ghost Zone." Since that day, no ghost has been allowed a breath of freedom beyond that electric fence, and many of the people Sam grew up around took great pride in that fact.

Since the day of the Great Crash, Sam hasn't seen a ghost in the flesh. Sure she, like everyone else around the world, has seen the footage of the inside, with an occasional glimpse of a generally pissed-off looking ghost passing through the halls, along with a containment unit or two, but that was just about it.

Of course, this was expected - as no one aside from law enforcement officers, government agents, guards, scientists, and designated camera crews were granted entry to the inside of the Ghost Zone, and even _that_ access was restricted by some countless amount of rules and regulations Sam didn't want to know about.

That was why Sam stopped in her tracks, and stared at that compound. She always did when she crossed the Saint Elms Bridge. She always hoped – vainly, sure - that she would catch a glimpse of a ghost. After all, right in that spot, she had the best view of the Ghost Zone in the entire city, without getting too close.

Then, Sam held her chin high and continued walking. Every time she laid eyes on the Ghost Zone, her resolve to free the ghosts hardened further.

 _One day,_ she thought, _one day, I'm going to see that place burn._

* * *

A/N: One of my shorter chapters, yes I am aware lol. But regardless, I hope you enjoyed anyway. Not much happened, I was just setting the scene. Or, actually, _re_ -setting the scene. Whatever.

Please leave your thoughts, whatever those may be, in the reviews! Thank you for reading!

Peace

\- Rookey


	5. Save the Aliens, Save the World

Aquarius

Save the Aliens, Save the Animals, Save the World

* * *

We're far from home,  
It's for the better  
What we dream, it's all that matters  
We're on our way, united

 _Swedish House Mafia_

* * *

"How was your nap?" A dark skinned girl asked Sam as she swept into the hospital room the two shared, after she convinced the receptionist at the front desk to excuse her tardiness.

"I didn't fall asleep, Valerie." Sam stated with a glare.

"I'm sure." Valerie smiled at Sam as she put down her sic-fi book and sat up straight in her hospital bed. "So you were late because of traffic, then?"

"You never know," Sam smirked, sitting on one of the revolving chairs in the room.

Valerie snorted.

Valerie Gray, to summarize her character and for lack of a better description, was what some would call a "time bomb."

Although there were multiple reasons for the nickname, some of which Sam wasn't ready to accept, Valerie's personality was the type to combust within a moment's notice.

She was very outgoing and outrageously opinionated, which was probably one of the reasons Sam liked her.

In a way, Valerie and Sam were polar opposites. Valerie's head of wildly curly dark hair was a source of envy for Sam, whose messy, longish raven pixie left much to be desired.

Where Valerie had thick, attractive curves, Sam was lanky - average-sized and as lean as a telephone pole. Sam's skin was the type to blister in the sun while Valerie's dark skin wouldn't _dare_ to redden, even in the most unforgiving months of summer.

With their beta-fish personalities, it might as well have been the Ninth Wonder of the World that the two were friends at all.

But here they were, glaring playfully at each other in the hospital room they've shared for years.

"I'm _outrageously_ jealous, by the way," Valerie commented as Sam rolled over to one of the many desks stockpiled in the room to grab the television remote.

"Because they're sending me into a pit of hormones and spitballs?" Sam quipped with a sly grin. Despite the words though, Sam had to admit she was excited that the doctors _finally_ considered her well enough to attend the local high school in the city: Casper High. It would be her first official attendance at any sort of public school since she was in fifth grade. Sam didn't know if she'd recognize anyone anymore.

Valerie, however, was not. If anything, she was deteriorating: her leukemia was getting worse. Chemotherapy didn't so much as make a dent in its process. But neither of them dared broach the subject.

"That you get to… I don't know - see the city! Get the fuck out of this building! Do whatever! _Go home!_ " Valerie exclaimed, waving her hands for effect. "You don't know how good you have it."

Coming from her, Sam had nothing to respond.

Valerie noticed and changed the subject. "How did you get… _better_ , anyway? Six months ago, you looked like shit."

Sam scoffed. "Thanks, Val."

"Anytime."

"I don't know." Sam admitted with a shrug, thinking back on the hellish reality she had to live with for a good chunk of her childhood. "Nothing was working. We weren't about to give up, but we weren't having any luck finding a cure. We did that news story on channel five; you remember when all the film cameras were in here, right?" Valerie nodded and Sam suppressed a shudder. To say she remembered that whole fiasco with fondness would be a _huge lie_. "My parents wanted to bring us some city-wide attention, I guess."

Sam had always had an extremely severe autoimmune disorder. She was constantly sick, and Sam continually got worse until her parents decided it was time to pull her out of elementary school and take her to the hospital in fifth grade, where she's been ever since.

Sam was diagnosed with Chronic Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, an extremely aggressive form of Lupus, which by all means should have been terminal, immediately upon entering the hospital. The doctors recommended she stay as an inpatient - at least until they could get the illness under control, as it had manifested itself in such a way that it prevented Sam from accomplishing even the simplest of tasks without medical assistance.

And, seeing as though Sam was now sixteen and has been hospitalized for nearly six years, it should be painfully clear how much "control" the doctors ended up getting over the disease.

It wasn't a problem financially, as her parents could handle it without batting an eye, but these (slightly decorated) white walls were starting to drive Sam insane. She needed _out,_ and now that she had that out, she couldn't be happier.

"Wait, but what happened?" Valerie asked.

Sam shrugged in response. "We honestly don't know. One day, I'm a lost cause, and the next, I'm completely fine. It happened _literally_ overnight."

The other girl blinked. "That makes no sense. You were sick, then suddenly, you're _not?_ "

"Exactly." Sam said. "They've been calling me the Miracle Patient, haven't you heard the nurses lately? I don't know what they did to help me recover, but it definitely worked."

Valerie gave the girl a once-over. If Sam didn't know any better, she'd say Valerie was checking her out. "I'd say so. What do you think happened? Did the nurses steal some Jesus Juice from the church up the street? I think that's a sin."

Sam laughed at her blunt-natured friend. "Not to mention illegal. And I wouldn't be surprised - it wouldn't have been the weirdest thing that's happened to me."

"But it would certainly be up there." Valerie waved a hand. "Maybe they spiked your IV with Miracle Grow and hoped for the best."

"See, that's what _I_ thought." Sam agreed. "I asked the doctor if he stole some water from the Fountain of Youth, and what that would make _me_. He didn't look amused. He definitely thinks I'm his most obnoxious patient."

"You're definitely his _funniest_ patient." Valerie chuckled. "What's this, the third time you've mouthed off?"

"Fifth," Sam said proudly.

"I'm impressed," Valerie responded. "But good luck beating my record. We've had to hire four different doctors because apparently they can only put up with me 'for so long.'"

Sam laughed loudly. It was funny because she'd actually _heard_ a doctor say those exact words.

"Do you want to know what I don't understand?" Valerie suddenly asked.

"What?" Sam responded.

"If we _really_ wanted to cure everyone in this hospital, why don't we just use Ectoplasm? It's supposed to have healing properties." Valerie glanced at her nails, but eyed Sam curiously. Valerie knew the topic of ghosts was a rather sensitive subject matter for her friend.

"I mean," Valerie continued, "if it works on humans even _remotely_ as well as it works on them, we could help so many people."

"That's true," Sam gestured to her friend in affirmation, her normally soft violet eyes suddenly turning into a grotesque, frostbitten purple. "But what about when it runs out? Ectoplasm doesn't come from Earth and we don't know if the ghosts know how to make it. If _we_ use all of it, they won't have any for themselves. What if it's sacred to them?"

"Sacred or not, if they knew it was going to a good cause, wouldn't they be behind it?"

Sam chuckled bitterly. "Ghosts? _Willingly_ helping us with something? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Valerie, we have them _locked in a cage across the street._ We'd be lucky they if they didn't kill us with the first chance they got."

Sam paused for a moment, her mind suddenly flashing back to that fateful day ten years ago. She was suddenly in a dark greenhouse, placing a blanket across a little boy's shoulders. A boy who's eyes glowed this unearthly shade of blue as they gazed upon her in poorly-concealed terror.

Sam shook her head to clear it. "Although I'm sure they're better people than _that."_ She amended. "Maybe we can try to talk the ghosts into showing us how to make it, instead of stealing from them. We could pay them - get them jobs. I don't know."

"You're such a pacifist." Valerie commented and Sam scoffed in response.

"No, really!" Valerie exclaimed. "I've seen you kick the shit out of nasty boys with those killer, steel-toed combat boots of yours, but you just can't _stand_ the thought of our people taking some aliens' stuff while they're in a containment facility." Valerie shot Sam a playful glare at catching the other girl roll her eyes. "Hell girl, you wouldn't eat a turkey sandwich if it was your _last meal_."

"I refuse to harm an innocent animal, just for the sake of having a _balanced diet."_ Sam growled, scorn evident on her face.

"See?" Valerie gestured to her. "Right there. Save the aliens, save the animals, save the world mentality. You should run for president."

"Politics are _not_ my thing." Sam scoffed, crossing her arms and spinning slightly in the revolving chair.

"Speaking of politics, though," Valerie gestured to the television. "I feel like we're obligated to watch what's going on. It's a big weekend, right?"

Sam nearly jumped out of her chair as she scrambled to turn on the television. "Yeah, it is. It should be on - I hope it's on. I actually really, _really_ hope it's on and—"

"Has anyone ever told you that you babble a lot?" Valerie smirked.

"Has anyone ever told you that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" Sam shot back.

"My therapist, actually." Valerie shrugged. "No, wait, that was 'use your words and not your fists' after I broke Timmy Jonathan's wrist that one time in third grade. That other saying came later."

Sam rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time at her friend and switched on the volume of the local news station.

 _"—Reports of violent protests have been rolling in by the dozens as a result of APGIP - or the Amity Park Ghostly Integration Program."_ The blonde reporter was saying onscreen, gesturing to a group of _very_ angry townspeople beyond a tall, chain-link fence. They were yelling profanities and holding makeshift signs that promised vehemence and death.

Sam sighed and shook her head and she heard Valerie let out huff of disapproval. Despite her suspicion of the ghosts contained in Amity Park, Valerie despised how the humans were treating them just as much as Sam did. Valerie was just wary of _everyone_ , human or otherwise.

 _"But despite these outbursts, the program's initiation is scheduled to go as planned."_ the reporter continued. The camera zoomed out and gave the two teenagers in the hospital room a good gauge of where the blonde reporter was. _"I am here in the Ghost Zone with none other than Maddie and Jack Fenton, the two leaders of the ghost race. Dr. and Dr. Fenton, any comments on the program's launch?"_

She pointed her microphone to the couple standing next to her.

They looked like regular people. The man was probably six-foot-four and broad-shouldered. He had a head of greying hair and jubilant eyes surrounded by laugh lines that spoke more about his personality than his words ever could.

The woman, in contrast, was nearly an entire foot shorter; standing at a good, solid five-foot-five. Her face was weathered with age like her husband's, but she still radiated an element of youthfulness that probably left most envious. She had short, thick, rugged yet elegant auburn hair that just barely graced her jawline and bangs that hid her forehead. She had these large dark blue eyes that looked much older than her demeanor suggested.

The only thing that distinguished these two as ghosts at all were their jumpsuits. All ghosts were required to don these tight-fitting, battle-ready jumpsuits while in the Ghost Zone. It was a uniform of sorts, and Sam doubted they were even remotely comfortable. There was probably a reason behind the jumpsuits, Sam assumed, but she had no idea what that reason could be.

The very least the Guys in White could do was let them pick the colors.

It just so happened that Jack had a certain affinity for day-glow orange and Maddie's taste leaned more towards the teal-blue spectrum.

Sam hated, _hated_ how much many people despised this brilliant couple. Sam heard that Jack and Maddie Fenton gained their doctorate degrees within the first seven years of becoming residents of Earth in both technological engineering and biochemistry, respectively. And that was saying quite a lot, because a doctorate degree requires eight years of schooling, not to mention twelve years of foundation studies and five years of basic language and arithmetic.

And these people earned their _doctorates degrees_ in _seven years._

Sam had a tremendous amount of respect for the two.

 _"Oh, please,"_ Maddie began to say in a slightly accented voice, _"Call us Maddie and Jack."_

 _"Dr. Fenton was my father!"_ Jack boomed with a smile. Although his logic wasn't always on par with his wife's, Jack Fenton certainly made up for it with his constant and nearly outrageous optimism. _"My wife and I are absolutely thrilled that the Amity Park Ghostly Integration Program is finally coming to life."_

 _"Making lasting peace with humans is our central dream for our kind."_ Maddie stated with a warm smile. _"We want a future for our children, and theirs after them. We firmly believe that beginning the integration process - first through the school system and then through the workplace, can be the beginning of a very bright future for all of us."_

 _"Some people, clearly, aren't so sure."_ The reporter responded, gesturing to the angry mob of cursing and spitting citizens behind that ten-foot-tall chain-link fence. _"Are you at all worried for the safety of those in the program? We are planning complete integration into the city's local public school, Casper High, for eight specially-chosen ghosts - including your own children. Does the rather adverse reaction to this program bother you?"_

Maddie, the more diplomatic of the two, opened her mouth to respond, but Jack jumped in before she could. _"We have_ complete _faith that this program will go… What was that saying, love?_ Sen malhelpo?"

 _"Without a hitch,"_ Maddie took over. _"You will have to excuse us - as you all know, English is not our first language. But, we have been assured that our children's safety will be guaranteed at Casper High… And I know our children are just_ dying _to explore the city."_

" _I'd say it's about time,"_ Jack said. Well, rather, boomed. _"Man, what I'd_ give _to switch places with them! Ten years, and all we got was a great view of the—"_ He stopped short when Maddie elbowed him in the ribs, a smile on her face.

 _"We are very excited to finally get APGIP off the ground. We are convinced that this program will do wonders for both of our kinds – we just hope you all feel the same."_

The reporter nodded, choosing not to comment on Jack's earlier slip. She probably understood. There's not much to understand – these people have been trapped behind a wall for a solid decade like prisoners, with no exceptions made to the _leaders_ of the ghosts - _at all_.

Sam turned the television off.

"Funny how they choose _next week_ to be the start of the integration-thing." Valerie commented after a moment's silence. "Just so happens to be the same week you start."

"Hopefully I'll get a few days to orient myself before they come and stir up the pot," Sam muttered.

"Or so you can make some friends _before_ you get into too many heated political debates?"

"That too."

"I'm serious, Sam," Valerie had to hide her laugh. "Out of everyone I remember at Casper, or at least everyone I remember from middle school, _you'd_ be the most likely to end up _with_ one of them."

If Sam had been drinking something, or eating, or had anything even remotely near her mouth, it would have gone everywhere. She didn't know if she was appalled or flattered, in a weird way. "You think I'd _hook up_ with a _g_ _host?_ "

" _Integration_ , right Sam?" Valerie smirked.

"You're insane!"

"Care to come up with something better than that, _Goth_?"

"Haven't heard _that one_ before. What's next... _Vamperica_?" Sam snorted.

"Don't tempt me. On a different note," Valerie started again, her tone more serious. "I think you should get to know at _least_ one of them. Maybe they can tell you about _the kid_. The one you told me about."

"The boy I found in my greenhouse on the day they came?" Sam asked. "He wouldn't really be a _kid,_ anymore, would he?" Sam sighed, and drew her knees up to her chest. "I mean… Not that it would matter, anyway. The government killed him, remember? He died right in front of me." Sam shook her head. "I still don't get it. He was a kid, and they shot him _how_ many times? He didn't even _do_ anything."

Valerie let out a sigh, knowing that her friend was about to go on a tangent. She always did whenever she was talking about the Greenhouse Boy.

"I mean, he _had_ to be terrified, right? He was terrified of _me,_ and I was just a kid! How do you think he felt when a barrage of _armed government agents_ shot at him?!"

" _There's_ the problem," Valerie interrupted before Sam could continue, pointing at her friend. "Right there. There's the root. We never consider how they feel about anything, because anyone _not_ human is considered _less than human._ Am I right? I'm right."

"You're absolutely right," Sam confirmed. "And I'm going to change that."

"Save the aliens, save the animals, save the world." Valerie muttered.

"Shut up."

* * *

A/N: Because I noticed a lot of similarities between English/Spanish and Esperanto, I'm combining it with Latin in future chapters (and _calling_ it Esperanto). It's so you can't translate it. I figure alien languages are nearly impossible for humans to understand, so google shouldn't be able to help lol.

Oh and that spaceship that crash-landed in Amity is considered the Eighth Wonder of the World. I don't own anything.

Thank you to everyone who's reviewed, favorited, and followed! You're all the best! Please share your thoughts, whatever they may be, in the reviews and I'll see you next time!

Peace

\- Rookey


	6. So That's Where Our Taxes Went

Aquarius

So _That's_ Where Our Taxes Went

* * *

Back in black  
I hit the sack  
I've been too long, I'm glad to be back  
Yes, I'm let loose  
From the noose  
That's kept me hanging about

 _AC/DC_

* * *

The rest of that Thursday went swimmingly. The two friends stayed in their shared room and talked about nothing, instead choosing to blare Dumpty Humpty from the speakers they rigged along the walls until the lyrics danced before their eyes and the hospital room turned into a concert hall, despite the fact that neither of the two girls could sing in the slightest.

Well, to be more precise, Valerie would never _admit_ to being able to sing in the slightest.

The weekend went as planned too – Valerie and Sam didn't do anything, as they had nothing to do. Valerie wasn't allowed outside the hospital, as her severe asthma had reacted so poorly to the chemotherapy that she had to spend at least three hours on a ventilator every night, with a constant IV drip and a loud set of lungs to complain about the inconvienance of it all. Although she only did it when in the company of Sam, who hardly ever left the room despite being granted limited freedom months ago.

They played Scrabble at one point that Friday evening, despite the fact that both of them hated Scrabble. But there was nothing else to do and they both weren't anywhere near tired, so they tried to think of however many extremely insulting curses they could come up with and play Scrabble with those.

Sam wasn't _entirely_ sure how the two friends got that to work, but they did.

Eventually it turned into a profoundly immature game of truth or dare, which morphed into a twisted version of Cards Against Humanity, but without the cards.

By the time Saturday rolled around, the Amity Park Medical Center had given Sam an official form for discharge and she was saying goodbye to her surrogate sister and former roommate, whom she promised she'd visit every day.

And by Sunday, Sam Manson was finally back at her gargantuan home for the first time in years - reacquainting herself with the enormous hallways and rooms, reintroducing herself to the butlers and the maids, and mentally preparing herself for high school the next day.

* * *

Sam was, to say the least, not the poster child for getting up early. She was a night owl through and through – she _despised_ getting up at any time that ended with "AM," and going to bed at any time that ended in "PM."

It was only natural that Sam would be born into a family of rather anal morning people.

Long before she was ready, that Monday morning, her mother had pulled apart the dark curtains of her bedroom window and let bright autumn morning sun shine through – directly onto Sam's face, where she lay in her cushy, comfortable bed.

"Rise and shine, sweetie!" Sam's God-awfully perky mother exclaimed. If there was one thing Sam didn't miss about home, it was the wakeup calls. "Up and at 'em! It's a _big_ day!"

Sam rolled over in bed and shoved her head underneath a pillow. "I'm a creature of darkness cursed to a family of morning people." She grumbled, half asleep.

If she heard Sam's snide, groggy comment, Palma Manson didn't respond. "Better come downstairs!" Palma Manson explained as she exited the room. "Or your coffee will get cold!"

Sam became more awake at the mention of coffee. She threw the pillow off her head and onto the floor before pulling herself into a crumpled yet technically upright position.

Sam knew she looked ridiculous. She must have had about six small braids strewn around her head, and maybe a line of drool running down the side of her chin and some makeup smears from the night before.

Sam pulled herself out of bed completely and into a standing position. The shock of her bare feet against the cold, unforgiving hardwood floor did an excellent job of jostling her into full consciousness.

Sam sighed, wearily rubbing the side of her head as she made her way over to her closet to pick out what she wanted to wear for the day.

It was only six o'clock in the morning, and school today didn't start until 8:30. She'd have plenty of time to at least put _some_ amount of effort into her appearance.

Sam sorted through her newly stocked closet for the better part of five minutes before coming up with a pair of ripped black skinny jeans and a vintage Metallica top, held skillfully together by a few decorative safety pins and otherwise fell off her shoulders and just below her abdomen. Sam was sure it just _barely_ met the Casper High dress code, but she was positive her mother wouldn't have dared to put anything out of dress code in her daughter's closet.

That was another good thing about coming home. Since her father was out working as the chief of security with the Guys in White inside the Ghost Zone, her mother _only_ had her daughter to keep her company. Sam guessed her mother found it pointless to continually argue with Sam about her fashion choices, seeing as though they hadn't changed in years. Palma seemed to have adopted an "each to their own" viewpoint when it came to parenting, in general.

Putting on the outfit, along with a deep purple belt she managed to find and some silver chain necklaces, a few of which bearing small crosses at their bases and speaking sacrilege, Sam jumped about a foot in the air at the sudden sound of a knock coming from her bedroom door.

Opening it, Sam came face to face with Hobson, one of her family's many butlers. Hobson was a generally kind-natured British man - tall, in his mid-sixties and vaguely egg-shaped atop a pair of long, toothpick-looking legs. Somehow, the man had managed to look the same as he always did, even at this ungodly hour in the morning: donning a fairly dressy tux, complete with a proper-looking bowtie and everything.

Sam always thought this man simply _emitted_ regality - somehow he made even his prominent double chin, small, slitted black eyes and balding head look as though they belonged on royalty. "Miss Manson, I do believe this coffee is yours," He said, holding up one of her mother's expensive, pale porcelain mugs.

"Thank you, sir." Sam said, taking the coffee. She had almost completely forgotten about the very thing that drove her to get out of bed, but it was a damn good thing Hobson knew her so well. Sam shot him a grateful smile. "Have a nice day."

"And you as well, Miss Manson." He responded before Sam shut the door. She shook her head, smiling as she gazed into the mug. She had only spoken with Hobson briefly the day before - nothing more than a few words of acknowledgment and a general nod to his presence in the Manson family mansion.

Sam made a note to herself to talk to him more - hold a civilized, mature conversation with him, one that she couldn't have with her mother without resulting in the inevitable argument and thus, preventing the nearly guaranteed destruction of property, either inside the Manson household or out.

Sam sipped her steaming beverage, relishing in the taste of her mother's hot, home-brewed coffee and reveling in the way the caffeine rushed through her veins. In mere moments, the coffee was gone.

The girl sighed. She wished she had more. Maybe she could grab some in a to-go cup before she left for school.

Sam made her way to her personal bathroom and washed her face, working all the sweat and grime out of her pours from the night before. It wasn't like she did anything exciting last night; she _did_ shower, but she guessed she didn't wash her face, in particular, well enough.

Pulling away from the sink and drying off, Sam undid the braids from her hair and watched as the short black strands fell in light, tight crimps around her head. Sam combed through it with her fingers and fluffed it out at the ends. She pulled a small part of it back into a half-ponytail, just so that it would stay out of her face.

By the time she was done with her makeup - dark smoky-eyes, sharp eyeliner, and purple lipstick not too far off from the shade of her eyes - it was nearly time for her to leave. Pulling on her, as Valerie so elequently called them, "killer steel-toed combat boots," Sam grabbed her backpack and exited her bedroom.

As she passed the kitchen on her way out the front door of their mansion, Sam's mother's chillingly high voice made her stop. "Sammykinz!" Palma explained. She swept up from her seat at the kitchen table and walked over to Sam. Palma somehow did that elegantly, despite the four-inch pumps she insisted on wearing every second of every day.

Sam's mom always had an elegant air about her. Perhaps growing up with, and marrying into, such an absurd amount of wealth made her to believe herself royalty among her peers.

Palma never said it outright, but the woman knew that her cold and superior posture paired with her sophisticated makeup, traditionally beautiful features, and professionally-dyed strawberry blonde hair spoke more than her words ever could about her social position in the elite hierarchy of Amity Park.

"It feels as though it has been forever since I've seen you, darling!" Palma stated as she pulled an unwilling Sam into a light, traditionally "feminine" hug. "And you're finally off to your first day of high school." The redheaded woman pulled away. "Your father sends his regards. He is very proud of you and expects to hear a full report tonight."

"Rodger that," Sam said. Normally, she didn't _do_ hugs. Sam Manson, if the reader wasn't one for contextual clues, was a _Goth._ Goths and human contact _don't mix_.

But Sam let it slide, just this once. "I don't want to be late," Sam said, backing in the direction of the door. "So I gotta go."

"Have a wonderful day, Sammy-wammie!"

"Yeah, yeah, you too, mom," Sam muttered as she turned around to exit.

It was a damn good thing she saw Hobson standing by the door before she ran headlong into him.

"Hobson!" Sam explained, backpedaling in surprise. "I didn't see you there."

"It is quite all right," the butler said. He handed Sam a to-go cup of coffee. "One for the road, Miss Manson."

"Thank you." Sam said gratefully, reminding herself once again how much this man knew her.

Then, Sam left her house, beginning her rather short trek to school.

Sometimes, Sam really hated the fact that she was one for walking as opposed to faster means of transportation like cars or bikes. Sam honestly could have used her moped, but she knew traffic today would be particularly grizzly and it was still charging from the last time she used it (Sam was all-electric everything, but so was everyone else. The world had all but discontinued the use of fossil fuels five years ago, and scarcely would you find a true 'gas station' anywhere in the entire state).

Had Sam _not_ have been walking, she would have dodged the obtrusive riots that gradually grew thicker and more vicious the closer she got to Casper High.

 _Right,_ Sam remembered. _This is 'the day.' The start of APGIP._

No sooner did the thought cross her mind did Sam find herself in a ripe mood for swinging some fists and planting some good-solid kicks into some bigoted asshole groins as she pushed her way through the crowds of angry, spitting humans holding signs that promised violence.

They were conspiracy theorists, the whole lot of them. They firmly believed the ghosts came to Earth to colonize the planet and kill off the humans. For some reason, they had it in their heads that the first thing a group of aliens would want to do upon crash landing in some backwater town in the middle of seen-it-nowhere Ohio was kill off anyone living there.

Yes, these people really were _that_ conceded.

So, the idea of integration was absolutely _atrocious_ to them. After all, why allow _ghosts_ to intermingle with _humans?_ The aliens _were_ out to kill _all_ of them, after all.

Sam scoffed at her own snide sarcasm, her thoughts briefly flashing to the Greenhouse Boy, his shocked expression tearing at her heart as he fell face-first onto the floor, bleeding this hauntingly eerie bright green substance all over the place. Sam remembered how the greenhouse reeked of the acidic scent of sulfur and iron for weeks thereafter.

A somber thought filtered through Sam's head: _Yeah_ , _the aliens are sure out to kill us, all right._

She pushed through the protesters with more vigor before finally, _finally,_ arriving at the front doors of Casper High, a full twenty minutes before the start of school.

 _Damn,_ Sam had some great time-management skills. A part of her fully expected to be late.

Sam looked up at the building in front of her. She's seen Casper High in passing of course, as any Amity Park resident would, but it was always from a distance. She's never been this close before. It was a massive building, honestly. It was all-around three-stories tall, with a gigantic clock tower like something off a college campus running up the middle of the redbrick building.

The whole building seemed to break the unspoken architecture law of the city: it _wasn't_ ridiculously modern. In fact, it looked like it was one of Amity Park's original buildings - before the Great Crash. It looked like no one wanted to knock it down – perhaps it was of some historical significance.

Sam didn't really care, though. She just thought it was a cool change.

She opened the door and walked inside.

The building, much to Sam's surprise (or lack thereof), was completely different on the inside than it was on the out. Forget "old-style, borderline historical" architecture – upon entering the building, it turns out this wasn't the case at all.

The interior was extremely high-tech. Touchscreens lined the walls, motion-activated doors opened and closed silently as students entered and exited classrooms, and the lockers didn't look anything like how Sam remembered the middle school lockers looking when she watched them with awed eyes in fifth grade.

They used to be square, two-foot-tall metal boxes – I'm sure you can get a pretty good image, here. There used to be a lock in the center and a few slits on the top and bottom of the box that Sam knew people always slid letters into, however they really served to air out the inside of the metal box.

Now, however, they were much different. They were just seamless, black panels of glass that lined the walls of the Common Area she found herself in. If Sam hadn't already seen people using their _goddamn fingerprints_ to open these thick, one-sided panels of two-foot-tall glass to reveal whatever the hell was on the inside, she wouldn't have known they were lockers at all. She would have thought they were fancy wall decorations – they didn't even project out of the walls like she predicted that any locker would.

As a result, the halls were wide and the sleek chrome floors made it so you could hear just about everyone in the halls.

Even the _hospital_ wasn't as technologically advanced as this school.

Nice to know the taxpayer dollars gathered by the head-honchos in Amity Park went to good, worthy causes.

Even still though, despite the stab of envy Sam felt at the back of her mind, her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open.

Everything was so _big._ Everything was so _loud._ It seemed as though every little detail threatened to overload Sam's senses.

She wasn't sure how to feel, but regardless, the next two years started looking up, even just a little.

* * *

A/N: Oooookay, hurray, that's chapter 6! Thanks for reading! Sam's finally home, yay! Now... we have her here, at Casper High: The bane of the youth, the adolescent's hell, the pubescent's purgatory, the teenager's torture, the juvenile's judgement... you get the idea.

Thanks for stickin' with me!

Peace

\- Rookey


	7. Magneto's Magnetic Mentality

Aquarius

Magneto's Magnetic Mentality

* * *

We are the voices you never heard  
We are the fire you never let burn  
We're just some kids from the west end

 _New Politics_

* * *

"Manson? _Sam Manson?"_

Sam froze in her place. She had only just left the front office with her schedule and a map in hand. The front office was, like everything else in this place, ridiculously overfunded and absurdly high-tech. A part of her hated it. And, of course, a part of her didn't.

Sam was beginning to believe she despised that part.

Sam was baffled that anyone knew her name. She thought everyone she knew before dispersed; maybe they moved to different schools, different towns, or different states and the like. Apparently she was wrong.

Sam spun around on one heel and came face-to-face with none other than Tucker Foley.

Oh good – a face she recognized.

" _Tucker?!"_ Sam explained. Before Sam knew what happened, the boy swept her into a bone-crushing hug, his face split into a gigantic smile.

"Sam!" He exclaimed. He quickly let her go, perhaps remembering her loath of human contact. "Sorry." He started. "It's just been so long!"

"I'll say," Sam muttered, taking her first good look at one of her only friends from grade school.

Tucker had certainly grown taller. When Sam knew him, he was just barely taller than her and Sam clearly remembered being able to run laps around the dark-skinned boy. Now, he looked like a basketball player – at _least_ six-foot-four with broad shoulders and a fairly solid frame. He changed his wardrobe since the last time Sam saw him too, but that was no surprise – it's been _how_ many years since the last time the two spoke? Sam didn't even want to know.

Where Tucker used to don army-green cargo shorts and a yellow long-sleeved shirt (something Valerie would have called a "fashion atrocity"), he now wore a pair of dark-washed jeans and a yellowish plaid button up shirt. He wore an old, worn brown leather jacket that Sam recognized from a long time ago – he always used to wear it in fifth grade even though the sleeves were far too long and it wasn't anywhere close to fitting. It certainly fit _now,_ though. And honestly, it fit him _well,_ suited him. His shoes were the same, too: a pair of old brown hiking boots.

His hair grew out slightly, as well. He now sported a head of short, neat dreadlocks underneath a reddish-russet colored beanie.

"You look… different," Sam commented. She wasn't even aware someone could change so much in that amount of time. Well, of course it certainly _has_ been a long time but Sam didn't think it's been _that_ long _._

"Speak for yourself," Tucker shot back with a smile. "What's the new look? New-age Goth? Punk rock? I like it."

Sam laughed. "Not exactly _new,_ " She said. "But thanks. I would have never thought I'd see the day where _Tucker Foley_ turned into a _hipster._ " Sam quipped with a smile.

"Hey!" Tucker defended as the two began to walk down the halls. "I'm so _not_ a hipster. I'm just _original."_

"Spoken like a true hipster, I'm impressed. All you're missing is the glasses, and you're golden."

Tucker sighed, loudly. He dug around in his gray shoulder bag/laptop case and pulled out a glasses case. He opened it and took out a pair of thick, wide-rimmed knockoff Ray-Bands. "I'd wear them now, but they came out with this _cool_ thing called _contacts,_ so I prefer to stick to those. Happy?"

Sam burst into a fit of laughter, "Very, actually. Remind me to get you a scarf for your birthday."

"No promises. What up with the hair, though? Get tired of the girly-longhaired look?"

"Obviously," Sam shot back, fingering the ends of her slightly wavy, not-too-short pixie. "Long hair's a pain in the ass. I'd say don't ever grow it out but it looks like you're one step ahead."

Tucker put his hands on his hips, looking offended. "I'll have you know the ladies dig the dreads."

"Oh yeah?" Sam asked. "Did they sore you a date?"

"…No," Tucker said, "But they will, Sam. Just watch!"

"I'll be watching. What class do you have first, anyway? I have no idea where I'm going."

"English." Tucker said.

"Same here." Sam smiled, happy to have an old friend in one of her classes.

"But it doesn't really matter that much today." Tucker said. Sam gave him a funny look so he continued, "Remember? Today's the start of APGIP. They're coming during first period, so everyone's gonna ditch to see them. I imagined you would too."

"First period?" Sam asked, excitement beginning to bubble beneath her skin. Sam didn't think she'd be this excited about going to school with aliens, but here she was, about to jump out of her skin. Maybe _that_ was why she's been feeling butterflies in her stomach since she left her house this morning – not the prospect of going to high school, but the fact that she was going to see _g_ _hosts,_ for real, in real life, for the first time in ten years.

"Yeah," She said, "I'll be ditching. What about you? I mean… What do you think about all… this?" She gestured to a nearby window, where outside they could see protesters being held back by police.

Tucker sighed slowly and shook his head, catching Sam's drift. A moment passed before he spoke. "I was watching X-Men a few days ago," Tucker started, his eyes glazing over slightly and going to a far-away place, like he was deep in thought, or lost in a memory. "And I'm starting to understand Magneto's hatred for humankind. Not that I'd ever side with him, but I _get_ it." He looked out the window, his eyes wandering back to the present. "I just hope they're better people than we are. You know?"

Sam thought's wondered back to a boy, lying facedown on the dirty floor of her greenhouse, with bright green blood pooling around him. Her words came out as a mutter: "I know."

* * *

The beginning part of her first period English class consisted of utter chaos.

And by chaos, I mean _chaos._

Students were talking loudly, in both excitement and anger. Some were furiously yelling political jargon at each other, while others were eagerly talking about the ghosts themselves – who were chosen for APGIP; who, exactly, were the Fenton's two mysterious children (whom had been mentioned various times in passing, although had never made any public appearances. If there was one thing the Fentons were, it was private. They were animated and erratic in nature, sure, but they certainly knew how to separate work and family), and whether or not they would be treated like everyone else.

Sam respected those people, but she heard somewhere a discussion about whether or not the ghosts in APGIP were _hot_ , and found herself losing some of that respect.

 _That was what they were concerned about?_

Personally, Sam found herself wondering - and doubting, even – if they really were a reflection of what she saw for herself ten years ago: good. With the way the humans had painted them, Sam would be not at all surprised if they were absolutely vile and disgustingly rude. She wouldn't, _couldn't_ , blame the ghosts for that, though.

The bell suddenly rang, cutting through the noise of the classroom and perking up the hopeless teacher in the front of the room who had simply given up. The crowd of teenagers grew silent, and then all at once, rushed like a stampede of rabid animals through the titanium door that had _just barely_ opened up on time for them to pass through.

Sam and Tucker found themselves lingering towards the back of the group, even though they so desperately wanted to see the ghosts as well. Sam's nerves were a practical trainwreck and her teeth were on edge, and Tucker looked like he was feeling the same thing - his tawny eyes painfully eager yet somehow in that far-away place they had been earlier. For a moment, Sam wondered if Tucker had his own _Great Crash_ story.

She never asked - just like how she never told him hers.

They were on the second floor, and students had gathered in a large horde around the balcony that overlooked the Common Area of the main floor. So far, it was an empty space lined with "lockers", faced by a wall of ravenous teenagers on three separate floors staring out at it, all eager for their own space and their own view of the whole thing.

Sam and Tucker had, somehow, managed to find enough balcony room for two people off to one side. Well, more accurately, they found enough room for one and a half people to fit, but Tucker took up most of that space and Sam took up the small fourth Tucker's large frame allowed her to have.

Sam began to wonder if anyone noticed the dead silence that overtook the throng of students as they waited eagerly for the small crowd of eight new students to arrive.

Over the deathly stillness of the school, nearly everyone heard the quiet roaring of a GIW-controlled "Specter Speeder" as it pulled in front of the school. Through a school window, Sam could see the barred windows of the large, bus-shaped silver hovercraft. She craned her neck for a look inside, but the windows were too blacked out for her to see anything. She cringed at watching the protesters outside struggle against the police forces to get closer to the vehicle, and Sam could almost hear their yelling reverberating through the school.

The student body collectively tensed as they heard the _swish_ of the hovercraft door opening.

And then there was silence: a deadly stillness that could have set a horror-movie fanatic's teeth on edge.

And then Casper High's main doors flew open with a resounding _bang_ that made everyone wince.

Two men in white suits marched through the doors, massive guns slung over their backs and glasses placed over their eyes. Following them, two police officers stalked cautiously through the doors with their hands on their guns. Following them was a tallish, overweight Caucasian man with a shiny baldhead and a scruffy goatee. He looked like a college professor, in a way, and carted with him a few books in one arm.

Sam recognized him from television. That was William Lancer, one of the head honchos of APGIP. Sam has seen him in interviews with Jack and Maddie Fenton.

"He used to teach here," Tucker breathed in her ear, as quietly as he could. "Taught kids with learning disabilities. Transferred over to the Ghost Zone, freshman year."

"Got himself a pretty good gig," Sam whispered back and Tucker nodded.

Behind him, finally, entered a group of teenagers, followed by more police and more government agents, both sets of adults with their guns directly pointed at the teens.

Sam didn't really get a good look at them until some police officer ordered them to line up in the Common Area and face the students.

Obviously, there were eight of them total, and Sam wasn't sure what she was expecting. But the fact that they all looked so _human_ took her aback.

They lined up in boy-girl order with ease, as if they did this every day. One boy, on the far right side of the line, was big and bulky. He looked like he took steroids with his coffee as opposed to cream and sugar. He was pale, with steel-toed boots and brass knuckles that were obvious even from where Sam was positioned on the second floor. He wore dark gray jeans and a slightly lighter gray muscle shirt, and his bright green Mohawk seemed to float in the air, giving it the illusion of fire.

The girl next to him automatically struck Sam as a girl she could get along with. She wasn't nearly as tall as the first boy, probably about five-foot-six as opposed to six-foot-five, and she had a skinny frame adorned with some defined curves that probably came from working her muscles to the bone.

She wore tight, black leather pants and tall skull-shaped boots that came up to her knees. Along with that, she donned a lose black crop top that was missing a sleeve, and she had gray fingerless gloves.

The most shocking thing about her had to have been her hair. She had this head of bright, electric blue hair that seemed to glide through the air on its own - a wildfire of movement. It was gathered into a tight ponytail on the top of her head and the way it flowed seamlessly outwards forced Sam to remind herself that ghost and human biology were very different - so as to not become slightly envious of the girl's hair.

Almost as if she were trying to match her outfit perfectly, the girl had a bright blue electric guitar slung over her back, and it must have been the exact same shade as her hair. The girl had an affinity for thick black eyeliner that Sam could see from where she stood on the second floor and an ever-present smirk on her face.

The others were just as interesting to look at as the first two. One particularly attractive girl with a gigantic bust and long black hair looked like a modern gypsy, while the boy next to her had a sleek, almost greasy grey-white mullet, pointy, not-so-fashionablesunglasses, and a trench coat. One blond boy struck Sam immediately as a biker, and the girl standing next to him, the one with the ombre, brown-to-green dreadlocks and the killer red leather jacket and fishnets, were obviously a couple.

The last two, though, were probably the most _normal_ looking pair of teenagers out of the whole group. They were huddled closer together, not touching and for the most part separate, but they continually glanced at each other, as if giving the other some amount of reassurance.

The girl had blazing red hair that would have made Sam's mother scream in jealousy. She wasn't dressed nearly as outrageously as the others; instead wearing a pair of deep teal jeans, a lose black shirt, and a headband that was some unidentifiable color from Sam's position, although it looked as though it fell somewhere on the teal-to-black gradient. The redheaded girl also donned a pair of vans.

The last boy, however, is the one that Sam found herself staring at. He was significantly taller than the redhead next to him and he looked to be about six-foot-even. He wore a dark blue button-up shirt and black jeans and it honestly looked like he rolled out of bed at the last minute but still tried to look nice. His shirt was ruffled and about half-tucked in and he continually messed with the sleeves – sliding them up and down his forearms as he glanced at the wall of eyes on them nervously.

He ran a rather shaky hand through his messy, windblown jet black hair.

As if he felt her eyes on him, the boy's head snapped up to the second floor and met her eyes.

Hers.

 _Sam's._

Sam could almost see the blue in his eyes from the _second floor._ And he didn't look away.

Even when Lancer cleared his throat, Sam still felt that boy's eyes on her.

"Students of Casper High," The middle-aged man stated loudly.

"My name is William Lancer and I am in charge of the Amity Park Ghostly Integration Program. Since you all are not in class—" The ' _where you_ should _be'_ was implied, "—We will initiate this program with a _bang._ Before you, you see eight specially chosen ghosts that will participate in this experimental program. As they will now be students at this institution, we expect that they should be _treated as such._ Therefore, the respect we expect from them," Lancer took a moment to glare at the bulky dude with the Mohawk and the smirking girl with the guitar, "we expect to see from you. The Guys in White will be constantly patrolling the halls and we will have police officers positioned at every exit. As such, please expect extra security measures to be taken upon entry and departure from the school until we know for sure of the success of this program. Observations and reports of discrimination and _racism,"_ Lancer emphasized the word, "will be taken seriously and disciplinary actions will be taken against any and all parties involved, _on both sides._ " He crossed his arms. "In order to ensure the success of the Amity Park Ghostly Integration Program, we will be initiating a zero-tolerance policy towards anything we believe will hinder the overall success of the program. Do I make myself quite clear?"

Some faceless teenager voiced a "yeah!" from the crowd of students.

Lancer smiled, and it looked like a few of the eight ghosts relaxed slightly too, however they were all still on guard. They looked as though the students were going to pull out some kind of weapon and fire it at them.

With some of the conversations Sam overheard, she wouldn't put it past some of the students frozen around her.

"Now that that's covered," Lancer said loudly, "Get back to class. All of you." He waved the students watching them away in dismissal. "Scat."

"You heard the man!" A large-framed Asian woman stepped forward. "Back to class!"

"That's principle Ishyama," Tucker muttered to Sam as the students began to break out of their awed staring at the ghosts and disperse. "We better go."

Sam nodded and backed away from the balcony. But, suddenly, she felt as though she were being watched. Her head snapped up, or rather _down,_ and she was once again involved in a stare-off with the boy with the black hair.

Sam's gut told her that she's seen him before.

But the image of a six year-old boy, bleeding and stone-cold dead on the greenhouse floor, reminded her of the impossibility of it all.

She broke eye contact with the boy and followed Tucker back to their first period English class, although she was sure they wouldn't get anything done that day.

* * *

A/N: Yeaaaah, remember how I said I thought it was mean that I left you on a sort-of cliffhanger? I thought I would make it only somewhat worse :)

Hope you enjoyed! I hope you have a great summer! Please review! Thanks

Peace

\- Rookey


	8. Nothing's Changed, Except for Everything

Aquarius

Nothing's Changed, Except for Everything

* * *

Monday comes around  
Your world is upside down  
Feeling good in the worst way  
The story's just beginning  
Time we did some living...

 _Kevin Rudolf_

* * *

When Sam's prediction proved to be correct, Sam and Tucker found themselves wandering though the more abandoned parts of the halls during the break between first and second periods and creating light conversation - like Sam's first day of school and how much the world's changed. Light stuff.

Despite the fact that Sam and Valerie got regular contact with the outside world, and Sam was granted the ability to leave regularly, the two roommates were still confined to a small hospital room for the majority of the time. They, despite their best efforts, were still cut off from the fast-moving modern world. "I remember you used to be into computers," Sam said to Tucker. "Is that still your thing?"

Tucker's face broke into a grin. "You have _no idea."_

Sam glanced at the computer bag slung over Tucker's shoulder. It was a large bag to begin with, and now that Sam got a better look, the poor thing looked far too over-stuffed for its own good. It was nearly bursting at the seams. "I think I have an idea."

Tucker just laughed, "Maybe, maybe not. I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but I _do_ build and program my own tech."

"Impressive," Sam raised her eyebrows. "What, planning on becoming a professional hacker one day?"

"Oh, there's no 'one-day' about it," Tucker winked. "I've been doing it for years. Hacked into NASA when I was twelve. Got some blueprints for my walls. They never found out, can you believe that?"

Sam probably had a pretty great expression on her face because Tucker just smirked triumphantly and continued, this time his voice significantly dropping in volume. "The FBI didn't notice, either. Neither did the CIA. They _really_ either need to update their tech, or get some new shit. It's _too_ easy."

"You're either going to get arrested or recruited." Sam joked, but then her voice turned serious, dropping in volume to match Tucker's. "Think you can do that computer-hacking magic to the GIW? I'd love to see what _really_ goes on in the Ghost Zone."

Tucker groaned. "The _fucking_ GIW. Don't even get me started. How is it that I can hack into _any other_ major government file system, but I _haven't_ been able to hack though their firewall? I'm about ninety-nine percent certain it's all in the tech. They're probably coating their computers in something, muting the signals, and upping security. If I upgraded _my_ tech to match _theirs,_ I'd probably be able to hack in, but I have no idea what they did or how to recreate it."

Sam gave him a blank look. "English, please?"

Tucker gave her an agitated smile, although none of that agitation was aimed at her. "Almost there. Need a few updates. I'll holler when I'm close, deal?"

"Deal," Sam said, shaking hands with Tucker.

"Okay," Sam said, "How does the class schedule work? We had first period, now what?"

"Break," Tucker said. "Or, as they call it, 'academic support.' Teachers are in their classrooms if you need help with something, everyone else uses it for break. Second period starts in about twenty minutes, then directly after that is third, then lunch, and then fourth. Boom, bell rings, day's over."

"Gotcha," Sam said. The two had somehow wondered to the cafeteria, where various students milled about; some waiting in line to buy food from the vending machines, some chatting back and forth at sleek, chrome-finished round tables, while some clusters of teenagers took residence on the floors and in the corners of the cafeteria, talking in groups.

Sam's never been to high school before, but she's seen it on television. She could almost see the invisible lines separating cliques from each other traveling along the floor like luminescent duct tape. The popular crowd resided at one table - what looked like an even split of five cheerleaders and volleyball players and five football players chatting amongst themselves and messing with their holographic cellphones.

Tucker caught Sam's gaze.

"I didn't think you were one for the popular crowd, Sam."

Sam tore her eyes away from them and back to Tucker. "I'm not. I'm just trying to decide if I've seen any of them before."

"You have," Tucker said. He nodded to a pretty Latina cheerleader seated in the middle of the crowd. She wasn't in uniform, just in a pair of low-wasted jeans and a tight-fitting, spaghetti-strap crop-top that was some God-awful shade of pink Sam could probably see from space. But for some reason, the girl seemed to have felt the need to parade her red and white pompoms around like her other teammates.

From across the room, the girl put a bad taste into Sam's mouth.

"That's Paullina Sanchez," Tucker said. "She's kind of the Queen Bee of Casper High. Don't get on her bad side."

" _That's_ Paullina Sanchez?" Sam explained. She clearly remembered Paullina from her fifth grade class. She was the girl all the boys wanted to "date." Sam remembered her as the girl who always wore princess dresses to school and never did her homework. She used to make fun of Sam's long, straight black hair, despite the fact that theirs were nearly the same color.

And now… "Actually, I'm not surprised. She hasn't changed at all."

Tucker scoffed in agreement. "Dash isn't over there, but I'm sure we'll see him at some point."

Sam remembered the blond bully, Dash Baxter, too. She still had a v-shaped scar underneath her chin from when the boy tripped her and she fell into the corner of a desk.

Sam was hoping he had changed some, but by the expression on Tucker's face when he said Dash's name, she could tell that was not the case.

 _Oh well,_ she thought, _he'll get his._

Sam glanced at Tucker, suddenly. She could practically _see_ the anxiousness coming off him in waves. He wanted to talk about _it_ _,_ but didn't know if he should.

"Say it." Sam stated.

"I wonder if they'll actually attend class today," Tucker released his breath, looking a little relieved. He seemed to grasp that it was a sensitive subject for Sam, just like how Sam grasped that it was a sensitive subject for Tucker.

"I was hoping." Sam said thoughtfully. "Maybe next period? This 'academic support' break would give them a little time to regroup."

"Is it bad that _I_ feel bad about this morning?" Tucker asked suddenly.

"What, that you were one of the many students gathered to stare at the newcomers?" Sam rolled her eyes. "Nobody's seen a ghost in the flesh in ten years. If we didn't already show up, Lancer would have probably called us out of our classrooms anyway. He seemed to have that speech pretty well prepared."

"You've got a point," Tucker said, his shoulders relaxing slightly. "I just… I just really don't want them to think we're all bigoted idiots. Plus—"

"—You want to make a good impression on that red-headed girl, I know." Sam smirked at Tucker's baffled look. "It might have been a while," she said, "but you're _still_ easy to read. Don't think I didn't catch you staring at her.

Tucker skulked, grumbling to himself about over-observant Goths.

Sam elbowed him. "Hey, you know, _I_ was going to make an effort. It's about time somebody started acting a little more _human,_ am I right?"

"So your 'making an effort' has absolutely _nothing_ to do with wanting to piss off the Mob?" Tucker grinned slyly.

"The Mob?" Sam asked. She's actually heard that name tossed around a few times, but she's never caught a meaning.

"The protesters," Tucker waved her off, "anti-ghost conspiracy theorists. Illuminati is real, Bigfoot is a thing, aliens are aroused by tinfoil, and Fort Knox is a lie – those people." Tucker shrugged.

Sam nodded in understanding, stifling a chuckle at Tucker's casual choice of words. Yeah, Sam was immature. Bite her ass for it, for all she cared. "No, the 'pissing off the Mob' part is an afterthought. But if we piss them off, then we're doing something right, right?"

"Right." Tucker confirmed with a nod.

Just then, the bell for their second period class rang.

"What's your next class?" Sam asked, vainly hoping they had the same class.

"Advanced Computer Science 3," Tucker smirked.

So much for that.

"History," Sam said, giving Tucker a look that clearly said: " _nerd."_

Tucker laughed at his friend. "Third floor, immediate right, down the hall and to the left. See 'ya at lunch, Sammy," he said, before taking off in his own direction.

"Watch it, Foley," Sam quipped after him. There were a select few people that were allowed to call her "Sammy" and those people were limited to Valerie and her Grandmother Ida, who was living in a nursing home in Florida. She supposed she could make an exception for Tucker.

Sam found it rather amazing how quickly the two reformed their friendship from practically nothing. After all, they lost all contact when Tucker was in seventh grade, and he was already in classes that took up the majority of his time.

Shaking her head and folding back up her map, Sam took off in the direction Tucker pointed her in: to the third floor, immediate right, and down the hall and to the left.

Sam came face-to-face with another steel classroom door.

 _Ah,_ Sam thought, _so_ there's _room 330._

She walked towards the door, almost convinced that it wouldn't open for her, but it did - at the very last second. It must be an older door, because the other ones opened at the slightest movement.

There was a small room beyond the door. It was lined with windows and the light streamed through, casting golden shadows on just about anything in range. Sam could see the dust particles floating in the sun, and found it much more mesmerizing than she should have.

Tearing her eyes away from the sunlight, she continued to glance around the room.

There was a holographic educational iWall (one invention Sam _had_ heard of) on the side of the room closest to her, surrounded by touch screens. About twenty total desks and chairs surrounded the iWall and the teacher's desk looked like the definition of an afterthought and was all but crammed in the far corner of the room.

A few students had already arrived, none of which Sam recognized. The teacher had yet to show up.

Shrugging to herself, Sam picked her way to the back of the room and chose the desk nearest the window. If she was going to be cooped up in this room for an hour and a half listening to some person babble on and on about something Sam already knew, then she figured that she might as well have a halfway decent view.

Settling into her seat, she watched carefully as students began to trickle in. By the time the bell rang, Sam counted exactly fourteen students total in the class, and no ghosts. Not that she was hoping to have a class with one of them… Alright, maybe she was. Sam sincerely hoped she'd at least share a few classes with at least one of them.

She had so many questions she wanted to ask; questions she felt should have been at the forefront of society's mind when they crash-landed here and, _shockingly,_ they had nothing to do with wondering what secret plans they were hiding and if they wanted to colonize Earth.

They had more to do with the culture of their people: what their home planet was like, if their cultures held any similarities to the humans', what their history was like, what variations of language they had, Sam could go on because God only knew how long she's had to ponder over them while cooped up in a small hospital room.

Maybe she could even ask one of them to teach her Esperanto, their native language – Sam knew now that it was the language the Greenhouse Boy used to speak to her, and since then Sam had taken it upon herself to learn it. She had tried to teach herself for years, but could never get herself to understand more than about four words total. The only thing she ever succeeded in _teaching_ herself was how to get a migraine pretty damn fast.

It was like Esperanto was _designed_ for ghosts to understand – not humans. But since her Miracle Recovery, Sam's been able to pick up on it faster than she thought possible. She'd love to learn more from a native speaker.

Maybe Sam was a little bit more obsessed with Ghosts than she would let herself believe. But hey, she was a Goth – anything dark and creepy was "her thing."

Sam snapped back to the present when the teacher finally entered the room.

"'Morning, class." Said a short, scruffy man in a slightly ruffled button up shirt and tie. He was holding a large cup of coffee and his eyes were slightly red. Either he didn't get enough sleep or he had gotten _far_ too drunk the night before. Sam had a feeling it might have been a little bit of both. Sam glanced at the nametag on his jacket. _Johnson?_ No, not Johnson. She squinted. _Ah, Jordan._ It was Mr. Jordan. Sam was close, she had to admit.

Jordan sighed loudly, leaning against a touchscreen-less part of the wall. "I suppose you've done the homework, right?"

There were some nods throughout the class.

"Well, then that's great. Peachy, really. Five points, I'll enter it later." He wasn't going to check. Sam could tell he didn't even want to move away from that wall. Jordan looked _far_ too comfortable.

"You know, why don't you all just get out your books and read chapters five through six for today and have the—" Jordan was cut off suddenly by the _swish_ of the door opening and sounds of someone entering the room. Everyone's heads snapped to see the cause of the disturbance.

Sam had to fight the smile from bubbling up on her face as her eyes lit up at seeing a ghost slide through the classroom door.

* * *

A/N: There's chapter 8! Now that this is getting more into the plotline, I'll continue to pre-write, post semi-regularly ( _maybe),_ and you'll continue to read and _review._ Right? Eh? Eh?

Nah, you'll review. I'm sure of it. Positive.

Anyway, see you next time! I hope to get at least one more chapter up before school starts up again.

Peace

Rookey


	9. The Loudmouth of Casper High

Aquarius

The Loudmouth of Casper High

* * *

You don't have to say nothing,  
Say nothing  
'Cos your eyes do the talking

 _Example_

* * *

A ghost, looking rushed and slightly anxious, practically slid to a stop through the sliding door. Sam recognized her instantly, although she didn't know her name.

"I'm _so_ sorry I'm late, Mr. Jordan," said the redheaded girl Tucker was staring at from earlier. "The meeting took a little longer than we anticipated." The girl grinned sheepishly, revealing a set of perfectly straight, yet slightly sharpened, white teeth. "I also may have gotten a little lost. Won't happen again."

Jordan waved her off. "You're good, we were just getting started. Actually, because I'm sure no one's going to be doing their work anyway, why don't you take the stage?"

The redheaded girl raised her eyebrows questioningly. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean." She said.

"I'm sure everyone has questions," Jordan said, gesturing to the class. Sam dared a glance around at her other classmates for a moment and wasn't sure how she felt with what she saw. It was a complete melting pot of expressions: ranging from excitement and happiness to anger and disgust. Hey, it gave Sam a pretty good idea of whom in the class to _avoid,_ not for her sake, but for _theirs._ Sam has been known to kick people she didn't particularly like, and even people she did. "So why don't you just tell us a little about yourself, and the program, and the 'Ghost Zone,' yada, yada, yada."

 _Smooth,_ Sam felt like commenting. She could tell that Jordan really just didn't feel like teaching, and he seemed much more interested in whatever the newcomer had to say. Also, it looked like he was fighting off a _massive_ hangover, and Sam honestly just thought he should go home.

"Um, okay," The girl said awkwardly at the turn of events. Turning fully to the class, she stood up taller and appeared more confident.

"Well, my name is Jasmine Fenton, but Jazz is just fine." Sam heard a few students whisper among themselves. _That_ was Jazz Fenton? _The_ Fenton's daughter? Sam wasn't sure why anyone was surprised by this – the Fentons straight up _said_ they were sending their children to Casper High as a part of APGIP.

 _Proves how much people pay attention to the news_ , Sam thought with an internal roll of her eyes.

"I'm a senior this year and, hopefully, I'll be graduating with this year's class." Jazz said. "Um, personally, I've always _loved_ learning, and I find it an honor and a privilege to finally be able to study the Earth and everything in it alongside others outside of the Ghost Zone." She specifically avoided using the word " _humans_ ," Sam noticed, and she had to give Jazz credit for that. Although Sam saw nothing wrong with it, a lot of people would have found something wrong in the way Jazz separated herself from everyone else.

Props to her for being smarter than she looks. And she _looked_ pretty smart.

"And I'm sure I speak for _everyone_ else participating in the Amity Park Ghostly Integration Program." Jazz continued, "We all want to see the program succeed, and I hope you all do too. Um, does anyone have any questions?" Her confidence wavered slightly at that last question, but she seemed to gather herself as several hands went up, not including Sam's own.

Sam couldn't ask any of the questions she _wanted_ to ask, because this wasn't _really_ a Q and A session with a real live ghost - it was a test for _Jazz._ Sam knew any questions thrown at her would most likely be lose-lose questions - framed and worded to sabotage any answer Jazz might give and twist it against her.

The girl _looked_ stressed out already and Sam didn't want to add to it. So, she kept her clammy hands clamped tightly in her lap, deciding to try at some point to catch the girl alone and ask what she really wanted to know. Jazz seemed nice, after all.

"What's it like in the Ghost Zone? No one's ever been inside." someone said from the back of the class. Sam dared a glance over her shoulder at the perpetrator and saw a small, Asian-descent girl in the far corner of the room. She looked shy. Sam had to give her some credit for saying anything at all.

Jazz looked as though she expected the question. "It's… I wouldn't call it _nice,_ but it's the closest to home we've got. I think it could use a little remodeling but that's just my opinion. I've let them have it a couple of times."

Sam chuckled under her breath. She was beginning to like this girl.

Jazz glanced at Sam for a moment, hearing her laugh. A smile pulled at the corners of her lips.

"Your native language is Esperanto?" A hispanic-looking boy a couple of desks over asked curiously. At seeing Jazz's nod, he asked another question. "Can you speak some of it now?"

Jazz cocked her head to the side, her smooth, straight red hair gliding around her shoulders with the movement. In fact, if Sam didn't know any better, she would dare to say the ghost's hair didn't seem to _stop_ moving. It was like an intangible breeze kept the strands from lying still at all. The movement was a little less extreme than the blue-haired ghost's was from this morning, but still.

Sam ran a hand through her short, choppy hair and tried to keep herself from becoming envious. Yeah, Sam had hair envy. Sue her.

"Quid tibi vis teikt?" Jazz asked. She spoke slowly, but the way she easily slipped into the complicated language made Sam do a double take. It was the first time Sam's heard it in person since that night, ten years ago. For some reason Sam couldn't quite place, it sounded different, now. It felt... _too_ easy to understand. "Én eszperantó egy sedikit berkarat."

"Sounds pretty good to me," Sam muttered before she could stop herself. She didn't understand the exact words, but she got the idea. Maybe her _own_ Esperanto was better than she thought.

Only when the class grew silent did Sam realize that she didn't quite _mutter_ it.

She looked up from her hands, where she had tried to keep her eyes for this session. Jazz was staring at her, and therefore, so was the rest of the class.

"I'm sorry," Jazz said, "Can you repeat that?"

 _Fuck,_ Sam thought. She sighed – no point in going back now. "You said your Esperanto was a little rusty. I thought it sounded pretty good."

"You can _understand me?"_ Jazz demanded, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.

"Not to a T," Sam admitted with a sheepish shrug, a blush turning her bright red. "But yeah, I guess."

Jazz was still looking at Sam like she came back from the dead: bewildered and slightly spooked. "What's your name?" She asked finally, speechless.

"Uh, Sam Manson?"

Jazz smiled suddenly, but that calculating look still remained in her bright, teal-colored eyes. "Wow, that's very impressive, Sam. Esperanto is a _very_ hard language to learn, and I would _love_ to know how you did it. Do you think you could talk to me about it after class?"

Fuck, fuck, fuck _, fuck_ Sam got herself in deep this time. Too deep. _Way, way_ too deep. How does she manage to get herself into these situations? Sam didn't know.

But she what else could she do? "Uh, sure?"

"Perfect!" Jazz perked up, smiling brightly, and Sam couldn't help but be a little awed by the girl. Looking around the room, Sam _knew_ that a few of the Mob members were students in this class, but no one dared speak out. Jazz was one of those people that everyone, no matter what color, shape, form, or personality, immediately loved. She seemed like one of those people that was impossible to hate - she seemed to bring out the best in everyone. She had _charisma_.

Jazz Fenton reminded Sam a little of Jay Gatsby from that book Sam read not too long ago: " _The Great Gatsby."_

The class continued like that - just some rudimentary Q and A involving basic questions, typically about the Ghost Zone or about the program. There was nothing Sam wanted to know – no one asked about the ghost's home planet or why they came to Earth in the _first place._ Sam didn't want to start a conspiracy theory argument in the middle of class, and she wasn't sure if Jazz wanted to talk about it, so she didn't bring it up.

And of course, no history got done whatsoever.

By the time the bell rang, Sam wasn't sure how she felt. She was excited for the chance to talk to a ghost, but she had no idea if her learning Esperanto was insulting to Jazz. Sam wasn't an idiot; she _saw_ that look in Jazz's eyes when Sam confessed to understanding her. She looked spooked, bewildered, and borderline insulted. The last thing Sam wanted to do was unintentionally appropriate their culture. What if Esperanto was sacred and she didn't know it?

The students - all talking excitedly among themselves about not only mundane things like school and their plans for the week, but of a newfound interest in the program - left the room in a buzz, leaving Sam to gather her things and walk out by herself.

As the door slid open and presented Sam with her exit, she found that the redheaded alien was waiting for her on the other side.

"Hi!" Jazz said enthusiastically. "It's Sam, right?"

"Right," Sam nodded. "Look, I'm so sorry if I've offended you in any way. I didn't mean to insult you or anything else, I was just genuinely interested in learning anything I could about you and your civilization and your home planet and I just—"

Jazz held a finger up near Sam's mouth. "Hey," She started, "cool your jets. You're starting to remind me of my brother. You didn't insult me; I just needed to talk to you about Esperanto. How much do you know? Where did you learn it?"

Sam shrugged. Was it a bad thing for her to know anything? By the look on Jazz's face, Sam certainly felt like it was. But Jazz's words contradicted her expression, so Sam wasn't sure what to believe.

Deciding that honesty was the best policy, Sam went with the truth. "I don't know," she said, "I know enough to get by, I guess. I've been teaching myself – reading up on it and studying it. It's getting easier."

Jazz gave her a thoughtful look. "Koj yuav to taub li cas kuv hais tias, amin'izao fotoana izao?" She asked, surprising Sam.

"Did you just ask me if I could understand what you're saying?" Sam questioned with a raised eyebrow.

Jazz's eyes widened considerably and she blew out a long breath. "Sam, I need a straight answer, and I need it _now,_ got it?"

"Depends on the question," Sam shot back, matching Jazz's urgent tone with a defiant one.

" _How_ did you learn Esperanto?"

Sam gave the other girl a weird look. "Like any other language. Start with the basics, go from there. It was a little hard finding any material in Esperanto, because it's not like it's a language from _around here,_ but I managed. I also had a lot of spare time," Sam added, seeing Jazz's look.

Jazz brushed an invisible strand of hair away from her face with an indignant huff. She looked deep in thought. "I don't know how that's possible," She muttered.

Sam obviously wasn't meant to hear that part, but she heard it anyway. " _What's_ possible? Learning another language? I don't know how many languages you guys had, but here on Earth, we have hundreds. Learning more than one language isn't that big of a deal, if that's the problem, here."

"No," Jazz muttered, her bright eyes in a faraway place. "That's not the problem. I _know_ humans tend to pick up on more than one language. I know three different Earthly dialects and had no trouble with any of them." Jazz shot Sam a weak, lopsided smirk at seeing her expression. "I've got a lot of spare time too."

"Maybe I should get to the point." Jazz shook her head.

"I think that would be a smart idea," Sam shot back.

Suddenly, and with a speed Sam most certainly did _not_ see coming, Jazz had her by the shoulder, pulling her closer. _Jesus,_ that girl had quite the arm. "Listen," Jazz muttered in Sam's ear. "You can't tell _anyone_ you can understand Esperanto. Not friends, family, peers, teachers, or other ghosts. _No. One._ Do you understand?"

"What?" Sam asked, her tone matching Jazz's in volume. "Why? A human knowing Esperanto isn't a new thing."

"Sam, _it is._ " Jazz said urgently. "Humans can't understand Esperanto. Ghosts… we've been around for longer than humans. _Millions of years_ longer. We've _evolved_ more." She took a breath. "Listen Sam, ghosts... we can hear and communicate using many frequencies that humans can't comprehend. Esperanto... it's been around since the beginning of our time, and it's evolved with us. It uses a combination of frequencies humans cannot hear and do not have the ability to communicate with. Humans may have the ability to become literate in Esperanto, but verbally, the amount of Esperanto humans are usually able to pick up on is minimal."

"Define minimal," Sam said.

"Three or four words. Sometimes five, maybe a max of eight." Jazz said without missing a beat, her tone still intense.

Jazz pulled away from Sam. "The government knows this, and we're not allowed to speak it unless monitored by a staff member or an agent."

"Wait," Sam said. "You're telling me you're not even allowed to speak your _native language?_ And the Guys in White claim to be good people." Sam scoffed.

Jazz looked at her funny. "Yes, this rule continues to upset my people greatly. But we can discuss politics later. Right now, I need you to understand that the fact that _you,_ a _human,_ understanding Esperanto is a technical impossibility. If anyone ever knew about your… _ability..._ " She trailed off.

 _Who knows what will happen._ It was unspoken, but was like the words were written all over Jazz's face.

"Is this one of those conspiracy 'trust-no-one' type of talks?" Sam asked. "Because if it is, how do I know I can trust _you_?"

"That's up to you to decide." Jazz said. "But unlike many of my comrades, I support the humans. I believe in my parents dream, and I believe it's the best we can offer for the survival of our race. So, I _will_ help you in any way I can. So will my brother," Jazz added as an afterthought, turning on her heel to walk to her next class.

"Your brother?" Sam asked. Jazz mentioned her brother before in passing, but Sam was curious.

"Yeah, my brother," Jazz returned, "You know who I'm talking about, right Sam? You were staring at him for long enough this morning."

Sam felt her face light up as Jazz turned all the way around.

"Yeah, I saw that." Jazz responded to Sam's unasked question as the girl started down the hall. "Have a nice day, Sam."

Sam gave a halfhearted wave but the other girl didn't see it.

She sighed and, readjusting the things in her arms, walked to her next class, attempting to digest what the ghost just told her. She didn't even flinching when the late bell's harsh cry tore through the air.

* * *

A/N: So the plot thickens...

Hah! Everyone thought it was going to be Danny in the class - wrong! By the way, despite the fact that Jazz is a senior, she's required to take this class. Even if it is with a bunch of juniors. And even though I said this was a history class last chapter, it's more of a government-oriented class, which is why Jazz and the other ghosts are required to take it.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll all review on your way out, so I don't _really_ have to beg. Because you were going to do it anyway. Am I right? I'm right. You'll definitely do it. I'm sure of it. Positive.

Peace,

Rookey


	10. The Piranha in the Goldfish Tank

Aquarius

How Many Jocks Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?

One - He Holds it Up in the Air and the World Revolves Around Him

* * *

I'm not afraid of burning bridges  
'Cause I know they're gonna light my way  
Like a Phoenix, from the ashes  
Welcome to the future it's a new day

 _Bon Jovi_

* * *

Sam's third period math class, shocker, played out much the same way as her history class – except her math teacher, Ms. Newcan, actually forced them all to do math after the class was through interrogating the poor ghost who so happened to find himself in Sam's class.

He was that blond boy Sam saw that morning. Apparently his name was Johnny Thrighten, but most everyone called him Johnny Thirteen. He claimed it was because he had a bad case of rotten luck back in the Ghost Zone, and gained a name for himself, but said nothing else about it. He soon retreated to the back of the room, sullen and brooding, and Sam fought the urge to apologize for her classmates.

See, unlike Jazz Fenton, Johnny Thighten - or _Thirteen_ \- didn't have that same gift of charisma the redheaded girl had. With Johnny, it seemed that you either hated him or put up with him – there really was no " _liking him"_ in the scenario. That being said, the Mob members in the class decided it was their time to take shots at the kid like gunfire in wartime, asking these ridiculous questions and asserting these ludicrous notions about government conspiracies and the ghost's possible plans for the planet. Did they come to Earth to colonize? Boot the humans out of their homes and take over? Load the humans into a _rocket they were constructing in the Ghost Zone and launch it into the sun?_

 _That_ particular question gained more laughs than anything else and the student responsible for asking flushed bright red and looked like he wanted to get up and leave right then and there. Sam would have happily asked him to turn in his badge and scat for asking something so _stupid,_ if she didn't already know he did it on a dare. Even still, Sam wanted to throw the thickheaded boy out a window but at least Johnny had the good graces to laugh and play along - saying that's _totally_ their plan and while they're at it, they might as well knock over the flag on the moon and put up their own.

He commented wistfully about roads without speed limits and speed traps, and that gained more than a few chuckles and longing sighs from various students in the class (including Sam herself). Overall, he didn't look like he wanted friends, and Sam guessed she could respect that. He was introverted in nature, and uncomfortable being among humans, probably.

For the rest of class, the students quietly worked on their Pre-Calculus homework for that night, however Sam found that she was done long before anyone else.

Sam had a tutor in the hospital, and they covered this material long ago. It was second nature to her now, and she would have signed up for regular Calculus, but Valerie's incredulous looks talked her out of it. It wasn't that Sam was discouraged from taking it, but she tended to forget her limitations, and Valerie took no shame in reminding Sam of the fact that Sam herself _hated_ math.

Unsure of what to do now, she decided to listen to music. Sam didn't spot anyone she knew in the class, and she wasn't sure she wanted to make conversation with the select few who _were_ through with their work.

" _Sam Manson?"_ Someone whispered in her ear.

Sam jumped and whirled around in her seat, causing more than one student to look in her direction. Her shock surfaced as a glare aimed in the direction of whoever said her name behind her. That is, until she recognized the offender.

" _Kwan Lee?"_ Sam whispered in response. There was something about the silence in which the students worked that made her want to stay quiet as well.

"In the flesh," Kwan whispered with a playful smile. "Sam! How are you? It's been a while."

It has been a while, hasn't it? Kwan used to be friends with Sam and Tucker in elementary school, but Kwan was always closer to Dash Baxter, the main school bully. Kwan would hang out with the two whenever he could, but ultimately, Dash took the spot as his first priority. But Kwan was a nice person, and Sam enjoyed his friendship for as long as it lasted.

Kwan has certainly grown since the last time Sam's seen him. The physical changes on all these people she's known before were just another painful reminder of how long she's been gone. He was bigger now; he looked much more like a buff football player rather than the scrawny, Asian-decent nerd she knew before. His black hair was shorter too, she noticed, and styled to one side but cut in a way that vaguely resembled something more militaristic.

Kwan was good-looking, and it looked like puberty certainly did him some remarkable favors.

"It has." Sam finally responded when she realized that he was waiting. "How long's it been, six years? Seven?"

"Something like that." Kwan muttered. "Where did you go? You dropped off the face of the planet, lots of people thought you moved."

" _That's_ a new one," Sam stifled a chuckle. "I didn't move, it's a _long_ story, now's not the best time."

"Later, though," Kwan grinned. "I feel so out of the loop, is this your first day back?"

"One hell of a first day." Sam sighed, thinking of everything that's happened, particularly from last period, and from that chat with Jazz. Not to mention... the implications of everything the ghost told her. Sam shuddered at the thought.

By now, the students that were done took Sam and Kwan's lead and began picking up various conversations around them, and the eventual dull roar of the voices circulating throughout the room allowed Sam and Kwan to drop the whispering and carry on their discussion like normal people.

"You could say that again," Kwan said. "I mean out of _all days_ for you to _finally_ come to Casper High, it's _gotta_ be on the most chaotic day of the year." Seeming to realize what he said, Kwan's eyes jumped over to the corner of the room. Sam followed his line of sight and saw, with a sense of relief, that Johnny Thrighten wasn't even giving them the slightest ounce of attention. In fact, he seemed to be doing just what Sam _planned_ on doing mere minutes ago – listening to music through these obnoxiously large headphones with bright green skulls glaring out from either side.

"Certainly makes for an interesting first day back." Sam responded, turning her attention back to Kwan. "Did you talk to any of them yet?"

Kwan looked at her with a mixture of shock and horror. "Are you _kidding_ me? 'Corse not!" Sam blinked at the solidity of his tone. She was expecting the opposite answer out of him – Kwan Lee was the most open-minded person Sam knew. "I know you're new," he continued, "but APGIP doesn't have a very solid popular opinion. Personally, I'd love to get to know them. Their culture and their language fascinate me but _talking_ to one of them and being _friendly_ to them is like committing social _suicide."_ His tone dropped considerably as he finished his statement.

 _Oh_ , Sam thought, _so_ that's _what this was about._ This wasn't the Kwan Lee Sam knew in elementary school talking, was it? This wasn't the same kid who asked Sam what the best way to impress Tucker was, after admitting to her of his longtime crush on her childhood best friend.

This was someone different entirely. The Kwan Lee Sam knew would have jumped at the chance to meet anyone who wasn't from this planet. He used to talk about ghosts like the way kids would normally talk about celebrities.

This teenager, well, she could tell by the way his cynical and judgmental eyes roamed over her blatantly Gothic-styled clothing and out-of-fashion pale skin that he had to bite his tongue so he wouldn't say anything rude. But Sam was waiting for it.

Still though, Sam found it in herself to be civil to the boy, if only out of respect for their past.

"Social suicide?" Sam asked, trying not to cringe too much as the words fell from her lips. "You think it would be _social suicide_ to talk to some newbies? What did they ever do to you?"

"They didn't do anything to me," Kwan said defensively, raising his hands in the air in the universal "don't shoot" kind of way, "But I _like_ where I'm at on the social ladder, and I don't want to get knocked off because Dash and Paullina caught me talking to some hot—" Kwan caught himself. " _Some_ alien."

Sam sighed and glanced at the clock. Oh, good, class was almost over. "Well," she said, "Have fun with your _social ladder,_ high school _hierarchy_ bullshit, Kwan." She thought for a moment before saying, in a lower tone, "I would tell you to pull your head out of your own ass and get your goddamn logic straight, but I'm going to restrain myself out of respect for the fact that we used to be great friends in elementary school." Sam cocked her head to the side at seeing Kwan's shell-shocked expression. "Oh, I did say it, didn't I? Oops." She shrugged. "But you weren't going to be friends with me anyway, were you? You seem to be part of some A-list club; I can't _imagine_ what being friends with a _Goth_ would do to that _spiffy position_."

The bell rang, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. Sam grabbed her stuff and slung her bag over her shoulder. Kwan was still seated, staring at her. "The Kwan Lee I went to elementary school with would have _killed_ for this to happen at his school," She made her statements fairly general, because she was pretty sure Johnny was in earshot and no longer listening to music.

Sam scoffed and made her way out of the room. "I guess people change," She said over her shoulder, leaving Kwan in the dust.

As she was leaving the classroom, she failed to notice the awestruck look of confusion that crossed Johnny Thirteen's face after hearing her tangent.

If it wasn't painfully clear before, it might as well have been in writing now. Life at Casper High was about to get a whole hell of a lot more interesting for _everyone_ involved.

* * *

"Man, I thought class would _never end,"_ Tucker stated when Sam met up with him by his locker before lunch. "I never thought Calculus BC could be so _boring."_

Sam did a double take. "You're in _Calculus_ _BC?"_ She asked, dumbstruck. "Do you have a _death wish?"_

"I'm starting think so," Tucker groaned, covering his face with his hands.

"And here I thought Pre-Calc was tiring." Sam muttered. "Let me guess," she continued, "you were thinking too much about food and aliens to focus."

"The fatal combination," Tucker sighed. "The Dynamic Duo. The Typical Twosome. The Particular Pair. The Combustible Couple. The—"

"You made your point," Sam interrupted, but she was smiling. "And you need to stop reading so many comic books."

The look on Tucker's face was simply _scandalized._ "I'd never!" He proclaimed with a dramatic gasp.

Sam rolled her eyes as the two made their way to the cafeteria, weaving through the horde of students who were thinking the same thing.

Finally, the two came in view of one of the many tall, chrome-finished pillars scattered throughout the cafeteria.

It had a touchscreen menu, listing food items and information along with the price. Sam analyzed it and, after scanning her standard-issue Casper High ID she was given a few days before, quickly chose the most appetizing-looking salad they offered. Sam almost jumped three feet in the air when a small compartment she didn't see before melted out of the silvery-material of the pillar, and presented her with her salad.

Furrowing her dark eyebrows, Sam carefully took the salad container out of the compartment and watched in confusion as the compartment melted right back into the pillar as if it were never there.

Sam held the salad container carefully, as if it were about to explode. "What happened to regular vending machines?" She asked herself, turning around to face Tucker, who was standing behind her. To her displeasure, she found that he was _laughing_ at her.

"You've never seen one of these before?" Tucker asked her as he walked up to the touchscreen. He tapped on the menu, bringing up the burger choices, then the meatloaf choices, then back to the burger choices.

"No…" Sam muttered, watching as Tucker scrolled through all the different burger options until he found what looked like the meatiest sandwich that ever dared call itself a sandwich. It looked like a pulled-pork burger with bacon and who-knows-what-else on it, but all Sam saw was dead animals.

To her chagrin, Tucker placed _that_ monstrosity as his order.

"What the _hell_ did you just order?" Sam asked, fighting to keep the disgust off her face. She didn't manage to keep it out of her voice though, but she didn't really care.

"Heaven on a bun," Tucker retorted. He glanced at the salad in her hand and gave her a look. "Don't tell me you're one of those diehard save-the-animals _vegans,_ are you _,_ Sam?"

"It's _ultra-recyclo-vegetarian,_ Tucker." Sam said. "And _that,"_ she gestured to the boxed burger and fries combination Tucker was holding, "Is a disgusting violation of nature."

Tucker scoffed as the two moved away from the "vending machine" so other people could use it. "Come _on,_ Sam, you're making shit up. _Ultra-recyclo-vegetarian?_ How is that even _real?_ Next you'll be telling me you work undercover for PETA."

Now it was Sam's turn to look scandalized. " _PETA!?"_ She exclaimed. "That disgusting excuse of an environmental organization does nothing other than objectify and insult women and that _is not_ what I stand for."

"I'm glad we're on the same page," Tucker said. He gestured to her with his _monstrosity_ of a boxed-up sandwich. "For your information, _Sam_ , meat provides us with essential nutrients we _need."_

"Nothing a couple of vitamin supplements can't solve, _Tucker_ ," Sam countered with a scoff. "What we _need_ is to stop killing innocent animals just because they _taste good."_

"It's not like I'm eating a polar bear! They don't have Siberian tigers on the menu!" Tucker exclaimed. "I'm not going to destroy the planet by eating this burger. If anything, _you're_ destroying the planet by _eating trees."_

"You might not be destroying the planet," Sam said, "But you probably destroyed a pig's family, somewhere. You're eating someone's _child,_ how does that make you feel?"

"Pretty good actually," Tucker said, and Sam was appalled. "Because I know those piggy parents you're so concerned about wanted their little piglets to achieve _great things._ " He pushed that god-forsaken boxed-up sandwich into Sam's face and she reeled backwards. "Like this sandwich." Tucker continued. "It takes a legendary pig to make a legendary sandwich."

"If you're trying to justify murder, it's not working." Sam said, crossing her arms.

"I'm not justifying murder," Tucker defended. "I'm just saying that it was for a good—"

" _Foley-o!"_ Someone cut Tucker off suddenly. It was a nasal voice, and immediately Sam resisted the urge to rip whoever said her friend's name's tongue out. To put it simply, it was one of those voices you could only hear a few minutes of a day without losing your sanity.

"—Cause." Tucker finished lamely. He looked physically deflated. Tucker turned around and Sam followed suit, not even realizing that the two had wondered into a more condensed part of the cafeteria. Sam glanced around for a brief moment, attempting to get her bearings.

Then, she saw the source of the disturbance.

Glaring down at the two teenagers and self-appointed social outcasts was none other than Dash Baxter. Sam knew it was him because he certainly hasn't changed much since the last time she saw him. He was attractive, sure; with military-styled blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a frame that vaguely resembled that of a linebacker, but that was about all he had going for him.

It took Sam a moment before she realized he wasn't talking to Tucker anymore. His attention had meandered onto _her,_ and he was waiting for some kind of response.

"Excuse me?" Sam asked, forcing her tone to become harsher.

"I _said,"_ Dash snapped impatiently. Apparently he didn't like being ignored.

But _damn,_ did his voice irritate her.

"What do you think you're doing in _my_ cafeteria, _Goth_?" He pretty much spat the words in her face.

" _Your_ cafeteria?" Sam asked. From Dash's side, or his "blind spot," as one could put it, Sam caught Tucker giving her the "Dash will slit your throat" sign.

Sam rolled her eyes. She wasn't about to let some _entitled brat_ intimidate her.

"Where's the deed?" Sam asked. "You got a contract? How about a lease?" She huffed. " _Please._ Tucker and I can be wherever the hell we want. Now, do you mind?" She gestured for him to leave, but she didn't think that was going to happen. Nope, definitely not, since Kwan and some other red-haired, meat-headed football came up behind Dash as a sort of posse or backup.

"I _do_ mind, actually," Dash smirked. "So, Tucker," The blond jock reared on the techno-geek. "Think you can waltz into _my_ school thinking you can do _whatever you want_ just 'cause you've got a ballsy girlfriend?"

"I'm not his girlfriend!" Sam exploded before Tucker could respond.

"She's not my girlfriend!" Tucker added helpfully.

"Oh _yeah?"_ Dash asked, turning back to Sam. Something changed in his demeanor suddenly, but Sam couldn't place just _what._ "Then whose girlfriend _are you,_ sweet cheeks?"

In that moment, Sam thought for sure she was going to throw up. Was Dash-Fucking-Baxter _hitting_ on her?

"I'm nobody's girlfriend, dunderhead, and I'm _not_ your _sweet cheeks."_ The last two words came out as a scoff. "Plus," She added, "Like I'd ever go for _you."_ Dash's face turned a darker shade of red than it already was.

But the offended expression that adorned his face washed away. "No need to be stubborn, um," He halted in his speech, giving her a questioning look.

Sam wanted to groan. Loudly. Somebody _had_ to be playing some kind of cruel joke on her – she hasn't changed _that_ much since fifth grade.

"Sam." She grumbled.

Dash's eyes widened, "Sam? As in _Sam_ _Manson_?" His eyes roamed her up and down, and Sam had the sudden urge to get away from him. "Wow," He started, grinning. "Didn't think you'd _ever_ turn out so… _fine,_ babe."

"Excuse me?" Sam demanded. "Who _the fuck_ do you think you are?"

"Ouch," Dash said, "Language much? It's _unattractive_ to cuss, babe."

Sam glared at the jock. Oh, he did _not_ want to have this conversation with _Sam._

She could see the color drain from Tucker's face. Oh, he seemed to remember what a pain in the ass Sam could be when she wanted to.

Sam crossed her arms, planting her feet into an unrelenting stance. "Oh? It's _unattractive_ to cuss?" Her eyes narrowed into a glare. "How about I _fucking_ cuss as much as I _fucking_ want?" It took everything Sam had not to go off. She didn't want to create a bigger scene than they were already creating.

Dash looked taken aback at first, and then he glared. "I don't think you _get it,_ princess. This is _my_ school, this is _my_ cafeteria, and _we're—"_ he gestured to the two jocks behind him, Kwan looking apologetic and the other guy looking indifferent, "—in charge around here. If _you_ don't _approve_ of the way things work in this joint," He raised an eyebrow, his eyes gaining a wolfish gleam that made Sam shudder. "Then you'll have to take it up with _me. Privately_. You got that, babe?"

Oh, if Sam wasn't seeing red before, she was _now._ "You wanna know what I _got?"_ Sam asked, taking a step closer to him. She stood on her toes and got right in the jock's face, nearly nose to nose. Her face was a feral mask of anger, and her words came out in low, distinctive growls.

However, she didn't know that her voice dipped onto a level Dash – and anyone else who was listening – almost couldn't hear. They could see the Goth's lips moving, but the words produced in that statement were patchy and rough, and their ears strained to pick it up because on some level they _knew_ she was actually speaking, as opposed to just _mouthing._ Trouble is, they couldn't _hear_ her.

" _I got,"_ She continued, "That you're an _entitled imbecile_ who can't talk his way out of a _paper bag."_ She grinned, pulling away and speaking in a slightly louder tone. "Do you want to know what else _I got?_ " She winked at the pale and sick-looking Tucker, standing off to Dash's right. " _I_ _got_ a pair of industrial-grade, steel-toed combat boots. And if you don't leave me and my friend here _the fuck_ alone, I will shove my boot _so far up your ass_ that your dentist will be finding pieces of steel lodged between your teeth _for weeks."_ She glared at him for a moment, allowing the information to sink in and permitting her expression to convey that she _was not_ kidding. Finally, in a low voice, Sam said with an evil grin, " _You got that, babe?"_

Without waiting for his inevitable retort, she brushed past him and grabbed an awestruck Tucker by the arm. "Let's go, Tuck," She said, as the two walked out of the cafeteria. She heard the shuffling of feet behind her, but she heard Kwan's voice telling Dash to let it go.

"I've had enough _stupidity_ for one day." Sam muttered, and the two looked for a place to continue eating their lunches, however different they may have been, in peace.

* * *

A/N: I kind of imagine Sam to be a super stubborn, loudmouthed person with absolutely no filter, which is why she can't babysit.

I'm hinting at more plot line things! eek! By the way, that interaction with Sam and Dash was _fun_ to write. I'm also incorporating several of my headcanons into this fic, they're pretty easy to figure out. If you track the dp tag on tumblr, some of these headcanons won't look new to you.

Anyway! That was the chapter! I hope you enjoyed it! I'm positive you'll review on your way out, so I don't even need to ask. Because my readers are the best and know exactly what to do! Yeah!

I'm sure you'll do it. Certain of it.

Peace

Rookey


	11. But Then Again

Aquarius

But Then Again, People Change

* * *

I never knew just what a smile was worth  
But your eyes say everything  
Without a single word

 _Christian Bautista_

* * *

Sam and Tucker, for the rest of their lunch period, _did_ in fact find somewhere to sit.

It was a still and dry late summer day outside, about seventy degrees and as quiet as the dead. So, the pair took no shame in inhabiting the ground beneath one of the school's rather large apple trees - it was just beginning to sprout large, mouthwatering apples from its branches.

Sam knew she'd have to frequent this spot more often, if she were to catch the apples when they were ripe. She was a little weird like that, so she had been told. But she embraced it. Plus, Sam liked picnics better than eating inside, anyways.

The two, for a while, sat in silence. Tucker prepared to eat his long-awaited sandwich and Sam took a swig of the water bottle she had picked up from an _actual_ vending machine shortly after their confrontation with Dash.

Sam leaned against the tree and opened her salad. She dressed it with a generous amount of Italian Vinaigrette from the cheap little pack it came with.

"Well," Tucker started, breaking the silence. "That was _interesting."_

Sam laughed. "You can say that again. I didn't realize he grew up to be such a pig. Actually, I shouldn't be surprised. He's always been a pig."

"Honestly, I was expecting you to hit him." Tucker stated. "It would have been fantastic to see the guy who's been bullying you for forever take a beating from the one and only Sam Manson."

"I almost did hit 'im," Sam admitted, cracking a smile. "But I took the high road, you should be proud."

"Yeah, instead you told him you'll shove your boot up his ass and gave him your famous 'fuck off' death glare." Tucker raised his eyebrows.

"I never said I took the high road with good intentions." Sam commented, leisurely taking a bite of her salad.

Tucker scoffed. "The funniest part was the fact that he thought you were serious."

"How do you know?" Sam asked. "Maybe I was."

"I'm just thinking about the logistics of shoving your entire boot _all the way_ up his ass, and it's making me shudder a little bit. Thanks Sam."

Sam grinned. "Now you can keep that image in your mind for the rest of the day, and know not to piss me off."

Tucker grumbled to himself before he changed topics, his tone almost doing a complete 180. "Seriously, not important. Well, it _is_ important, because Dash's a dick and karma's a bitch but this is _more_ important." The look on his face made Sam believe that the word "excited" was a horrible understatement.

" _What's_ more important?" Personally, Sam thought the shit she would probably take sometime later that day would be more important than Dash Baxter, but now she wanted to listen to whatever Tucker had to say.

"Did you see the way he was _staring_ at you?" Tucker said, his voice low and scandalized.

"Dash Baxter?" Sam asked. "Well, yeah, he looked like I ran over his dog and pissed in his food. What's your point?"

" _No!_ " Tucker said, "Not Dash, the _g_ _host_!"

Sam was suddenly taken aback. "The _g_ _host?_ What ghost? Who was staring at me? And _why_ do you look like you're about to jump out of your seat and do the fan-girl squeal?"

"You didn't see them?" Tucker asked. "They were all sitting at a table near the back of the cafeteria. Keeping to themselves, but what'd'ya expect?"

" _Ooh,"_ Sam said sarcastically, with an underlying note of humor in her voice. "The ghosts have their own _table._ Please, tell me more."

"Your sarcasm is not appreciated," Tucker shot back. "But anyway they were all at that _table,_ right? Like, they were minding their own business and stuff but this one ghost was just _staring_ at you for like, the whole time!"

 _Whoa, wait._ The voice in Sam's head spoke of its own accord. "Which one?" She asked. "And why me? I was just giving a bully a piece of my mind, isn't that what people _do_ in high school?"

Tucker looked at her like she just announced that she was, in fact, an extraterrestrial being. "' _Isn't that what people do in high school?'"_ He repeated. "Sam, _no._ Nobody does that – _especially_ not to Dash Baxter. I mean, unless you're insane, or have no regard for your social standing, or just have a death wish." He gave Sam a thoughtful look. "I'm starting to think you have all three."

Sam scoffed. "Well, I might be a little insane and I couldn't give _any less_ of a shit about my _social standing,_ but the death wish is a little out there." Sam rolled her eyes, taking another forkful of her salad and putting it into her mouth. "I had a brush with death once already, and it's _not_ as fun as those horror movies make it out to be."

"And they don't make it out to be very fun," Tucker commented. Sam was actually grateful he didn't choose to peruse _that_ particular conversation further. Tucker knew Sam was terminally ill, and he respected the fact that she might not want to talk about it _or_ her recovery quite yet. Although she could tell from Tucker's expression that he _wanted_ to know.

But she needed a little more time.

"As I was saying," Tucker continued, "The one with the black hair, you know the one I'm talking about? Tallish, pale, collard shirt, I swear to _God_ I could see his eye color from across the room. What's that bluish-green color called again? You're an art person, right? Or was that a phase?"

"Cyan," Sam smirked. "Primary subtractive color. Bluish-green. Is that what you were talking about?"

" _That one!"_ Tucker explained. "Cyan. Whatever. But dude, I _swear_ I could see it from across the room. And he was just _staring_ at you. I wasn't sure if it was romantic or creepy."

"Dark hair, blue eyes," Sam muttered as she thought back to that morning, and then to second period. "Oh!" She explained. "Jazz's brother. I forget his name. Never been a name-person," Sam muttered as an afterthought, thinking back. "Yeah," She finally said. "Can't remember the name. But I know who you're talking about. Why was he staring at me?" She was a little baffled as to why a ghost would even take a remote amount of interest in a human - let alone _her._

That is, unless Jazz told him about this morning.

 _Oh,_ Sam thought, _that's it._

But what Tucker said next made her retract that thought. "Well, he wasn't really staring at _you,_ per say. I mean, he _was,_ but that death glare he was giving Dash made me think that dunderhead was gonna explode."

"He was glaring at Dash? What'd Dash do to him?" Internally, Sam was beginning to plot her next attack on Dash if she heard he did anything to a ghost.

Tucker's face split into a sly grin. "I don't think Dash did anything to him. I think he was more concerned with what Dash was doing to _you."_

Sam coughed and nearly choked on the bite of salad she just took. "I get your point Tucker, but _please_ word that differently next time."

Tucker blushed bright red. "Sorry." he said. "But he looked like he was about to jump across the room and maul Dash. I swear, I thought he was going to do it. He looked, like, hyper-defensive. You know, the over-protective boyfriend with a splash of super-powers look." Tucker paused, taking in Sam's baffled expression. It was as if years of childhood friendship gave him the ability to read the Gothic girl's mind. "Sam," He started, "Do you know him?"

"Of course not," Sam snapped. "I haven't seen an actual ghost since the day they arrived, and _that_ was just on television. Other than that, it's just been Jack and Maddie Fenton."

As Sam said the words, images of a small, dark haired boy with glowing eyes resurfaced in her mind on their own accord. He was laughing with her. Then in a flash, he was dead – his blood spilling out across the floor.

It made Sam sick to know they could never quite remove that green stain of ectoplasm from the greenhouse floor. To make matters worse, ectoplasm glows in the dark, so she was always painfully reminded of what happened that fateful night, every night.

She hardly ever went into the greenhouse anymore.

"I've never seen him before." Sam stated with as much finality as she could muster.

"Alright," Tucker responded, holding up his hands in a typical surrender. "I believe you, it just looked like he knew you. Maybe I was wrong." Tucker shrugged. "You should still talk to him at some point." He raised an eyebrow, and then he grinned wickedly. "Oh, it would be so _great_ to be friends with the only person ballsy enough to initiate the first-ever alien-human hookup."

Sam threw her closed and nearly empty water bottle at the boy, who cackled and fell into the grass.

"The worst part is that I know you're serious," Sam grumbled, glaring at something in the distance as she ate the remainder of her lunch.

"Ghosts aside," Tucker started again, sitting up. "What's your next period class? Actually, what's your schedule? I need to know how many classes I can irritate you in."

Sam snickered and pulled out the wrinkled piece of paper the old woman at the front office gave her earlier that day. "Um," she started, scanning the page. "Astronomy, room 231. Ms. Cooper. I'm guessing by the way you're nodding at me you have the same thing?" Sam asked her smiling friend.

"Yep," He commented. "Continue."

Sam rolled her eyes and started again. "I've got bio, fine art, gym, and a free period tomorrow. And I had English, history, pre-calc, and astronomy today."

"That's about an even split." Tucker commented. "Did you do that on purpose?"

"You're asking the girl who's only ever seen high school on television."

" _Riiight,"_ Tucker said, "You're the school's super-newb. At least you got by with minimal embarrassment today."

"Do teachers _usually_ publicly embarrass the new students?" Sam asked, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

"It's like they're trying to make a point out of it." Tucker said. "Establish dominance. I don't know, whatever teachers do. But usually they make you stand, say your name, and ask you a barrage of questions you may or may not feel like answering in front of the other twenty-plus kids. Oh, and we've got astronomy, bio, and English together."

" _Finally,_ someone I know is in some of my classes." Sam said.

She thought for a moment, tempted to change the subject. She couldn't stop thinking about the cryptic talk she had with Jazz Fenton that morning. Maybe Tucker would know more about Esperanto, if she asked. He seemed just about as into the whole "Ghost Rights" campaign as she was.

Sam had her own reasons for believing what she did, and she was starting to think maybe Tucker did too.

"Tucker?" Sam asked.

Tucker let out a vague "hmm?" in response.

"I have a question." Sam stated.

"Shoot."

"Jazz Fenton was in my history class this morning," Sam stated, "and she started talking in Esperanto. Do you know anything about the language?"

Tucker gave her a look, leaning back in the grass and resting on his elbows. "Esperanto?" He asked. "Yeah, I know a little bit about it. Why?"

"I dunno," Sam lied quickly. "I was just curious. Been trying to learn it, but it's not going well." She eyed him, attempting to make herself sound believable.

Actually, what she said wasn't completely wrong. Sam _was_ trying to learn the language, and she was wondering what all the hoopla was about.

However, it _was_ going well - actually, it was going _fabulously_. Since Sam's recovery, learning Esperanto had become surprisingly easy, for reasons she didn't quite understand.

She picked up on the many different tenses easily and the vocabulary was getting simpler for her to grasp. Sam was just struggling to digest the information that Jazz had revealed to her: _Humans couldn't speak it?_

How was that even possible? Of course humans could speak it. Sam could understand it, and to some extent speak it, and she was perfectly human. She was born human, and she felt human now.

But then again...

Sam wanted a second opinion. Or she just wanted to talk about it, either answer was probably accurate.

But to her complete surprise, Tucker started laughing. "Of course it's not going well!" He exclaimed. "Esperanto is an _alien language_ , so of course we can't understand it."

 _That sounded familiar._ Jazz said that exact same thing. It wasn't like Sam doubted what Jazz said, but she didn't know how much she _believed_ it, either. Sam prompted him to continue with a wave of her hand, "I'm not sure I follow."

The nerd gave her a funny look. "Do you really not know about Esperanto?"

"Would I be asking if I did?"

"Good point." Tucker said. He crossed his legs in the grass and rested his elbows on his knees as if he were some kind of hippy-dippy environmental studies teacher. "They explained this to us freshman year but I'll give you the freeze-dried version. Ghosts aren't from Earth. You know that. They're from a planet like, several thousand _light years_ away – called _Phantom Planet._ It's in the Andromeda galaxy, if I remember right. It's not even in the _Milky Way._ It's also like… billions of years older than Earth. You probably _also_ knew that. Where was I going with this?"

"Esperanto." Sam said, nonplused.

"Esperanto!" Tucker continued. "So since Phantom Planet is older than Earth, ghosts have been around for longer than humans. _Millions_ of years longer. Like, _several million."_

"A really fucking long time." Sam concluded.

"Exactly. Because of that, they're a lot more evolved than we are. Like, think of it this way: Ghosts are what humans _could_ look like in another million years. Biologically speaking, that is. Because they're more evolved, they can hear and speak on frequencies we _currently_ can't understand. And since its not like there was a human present to tell them what to do when they made the language, Esperanto is comprised of a bunch of sounds that we humans can neither make nor hear. Catching on?" Tucker explained.

"So, humans can't understand Esperanto because we're not biologically equipped to comprehend it." Sam simplified. " _That's_ what you meant by 'alien language.'" As Sam said the words, she felt her stomach drop a little bit. Jazz was telling the truth - not that Sam didn't believe her. She did, but hearing it from someone else in a different context, someone Sam _knew,_ made it a lot more real for her.

Then, the real question was: _How?_

For a moment, Sam wondered if ghosts were permitted cell phones in the Ghost Zone.

"Exactly." Tucker said. "Couldn't have said it any better myself. I mean, don't get me wrong, some of what we _can_ pick up on _can_ make sense. I've been trying to teach myself Esperanto for _years_ and I know maybe…. Four words. Five on a good day. _Maybe_ six if I'm feeling extremely confident." He huffed cockily. " _And_ I'm almost completely literate in Esperanto. As long as they _write down_ what they're saying, I got it."

 _This part,_ was news. At least becoming literate wasn't as big of a deal. At least that was more _normal._

Sam gave Tucker a careful once-over. "I'm guessing not many people can say that?"

"You guessed right!" Tucker said. "It was a lot of work, but I'm proud of myself. Do you know any?"

"A little bit," Sam said vaguely. She really wanted to tell Tucker about her discovery, but knowing what she knew now and going by what Jazz told her that morning, Sam knew that it was better to keep her loudmouth shut.

"I bet you don't know _six words,_ though!" He teased.

 _Try most of the language,_ Sam wanted to say. But she refrained; glancing at the security camera pointed right near their general location by the tree.

Tucker followed her gaze and something changed in his expression at seeing hers. Sam could have sworn up and down Tucker was a mind reader when he said: "There's more to this, isn't there? We'll talk more later. C'mon, Sam," Tucker stood up, brushing crumbs off the front of his shirt and his pants. He picked up his trash and offered Sam a hand, "The bell's about to ring."

Cautiously, Sam accepted Tucker's hand and he pulled her up. Note that it was only out of respect for their friendship that she allowed him to help her up, whereas normally she would have shot him a glare and got up herself. Because _she could,_ thank you very much.

"We'll talk more later," Sam confirmed, as she followed Tucker to their final class of the day, the warning bell ringing in their wake.

Maybe she'd tell Tucker.

But then again... six years is a long time, and people change like the wind.

* * *

A/N: Okay, that's all! I promise the other star of our show _will_ show up soon... But it's really fun messing with my readers, I gotta say. I don't have any other notes other than to stay tuned for next time and to please, please, _please_ drop a review on your way out! Thanks, love you all!

Peace

Rookey


	12. Astrology: The Lost Art

Aquarius

Astrology: The Useless Science and the Lost Art

* * *

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Listen can you hear the distance calling  
Far away but will be with you soon  
Rocket into outer space in orbit  
Take us to the rock stars on the moon _  
_

 _Kylie Minogue_

* * *

Tucker and Sam made sure to arrive to their Astronomy class before anyone else. Apparently, or so Tucker explained to Sam, Astronomy was an extremely new class; the school's administration only introduced it this year. Tucker kept going on about how this class should have come about sooner, however he was glad to be able to take it now.

"I mean," Tucker was saying as the two entered the empty classroom on the first floor, "It's 2025, you'd think they would have started teaching this class _years_ ago. Like, even before 2015. You know, _before the_ _alien space ship crashed into our town._ "

"A class about space, huh?" Sam commented. "I thought there was some sort of unspoken high school rule that teachers _weren't_ supposed to teach us anything we'd _actually_ find interesting or _actually_ use."

Tucker gave her a funny look as the two sat in the pair of desks in the far corner of the room. "For someone who's never been to high school before, you sure know a lot about it."

Sam shrugged. "I've been getting tutored for the past few years. Lots of spare time, I look things up."

"You mean watch High School Musical over and over?"

"More like Highschool of the Dead." Sam shot back, glaring at her friend for even _suggesting_ that she'd ever watch something so horrendous.

Tucker raised an eyebrow. "You're into anime?"

"Used to be. Wasn't really doing it for me, moved on to Stephen King and, well," Sam shrugged. "I'm a sucker for the classics."

Tucker just nodded, but his expression clearly stated: _how did I ever become friends with you?_

"I don't know," Tucker said. His attention shot forward as a few students in letterman entered the classroom, chatting with each other casually. The jocks eyed Sam and Tucker, and hurriedly skirted to the opposite end of the classroom at seeing Sam's ruthless and borderline infamous "Batglare."

"I'm more into sci-fi, myself." Tucker continued effortlessly. He was amused by the jocks Sam successfully managed to scare off, but he didn't say anything about it. Sam could tell he was going to make her do the talking from now on when it came to bullies, but she was more than okay with that.

"Looks like you came to the right town, and took the right class." Sam grinned at him and he choked on a laugh.

"Got that right. We've got aliens already, but what's next? Zombies? Vampires? _Actual, dead_ ghosts?"

Sam made sure that, among the students beginning to trickle into the class, the ghosts were not among them. "Actual, dead ghosts?" Sam repeated. " _That_ would be something. I thinking it would stretch this town's weirdness factor a little too far."

"I'd think out of all people, _you'd_ be okay with that."

"Never said I wasn't." Sam said. "I'd probably be unreasonably happy, actually. Dead people are cool. Dark, but cool."

"Don't tell me you talk to dead people in your spare time."

"Oh, all the time." Sam snarked. "Actually, I'm dating one. We've been friends for years. But I'm also a ghost hunter. It's a confusing relationship."

"I could only imagine," Tucker deadpanned, straight-faced. "Oh, God don't tell me your _boyfriend's_ a ghost hunter, too. _That_ would be one hell of a relationship."

"It'd make for a fantastic television show." Sam commented, arching her back in a nonchalant stretch. "Could have a huge fan base. I could see it."

Tucker barked in laughter as the last few teenagers filed into the classroom, just as the final bell rung.

Stifling their laughter, the two glanced around the room. It was a fairly large class – probably twenty-five, twenty-seven kids total. At least four were on the football team, Sam observed, and three were on the cheerleading team. There might have been more, but those were the only ones parading around in their uniforms.

There was a small corner of nerds near the classroom door, all of them talking quietly among themselves and texting or passing notes.

The rest of the class seemed to be divided into smaller and less obvious cliques that Sam couldn't really decipher between, and she couldn't bring herself to care enough to try.

She did, however, see a few people that seemed worthy of attention. Sam didn't know why she was so excited to see them in her class, but she was.

They were hard to miss, really. They probably entered into the classroom while Sam and Tucker were talking. Sam honestly hoped they didn't hear her and Tucker's conversation – or, if they did, have the common sense to know that on Earth, the word "ghost" commonly refers to someone who's _dead,_ not someone from _space._

Across the classroom, three such ghosts sat together in a small cluster of desks.

There seemed to be only three, as they seemed to stick close and everyone else in the class seemed to try their very hardest to shy away from them – moving desks, scooting away, eyeing them warily, and Sam thought the whole fiasco was very immature and rude.

The three ghosts, the gypsy-esque one with the headband, the smirking punk-rock girl with the ponytail, and the boy with the blue eyes and the nervous smile, seemed just as wary of the students as they were of them. Well, the two girls were. The boy, well, not so much. In fact, he seemed more intent of staring at his hands under the desk then actually making eye contact with anyone.

Sam could relate to that, or at least respect it. She could see herself doing it too, if all the attention was on her.

No, wait, she might just take to glaring at anyone that so much as glanced her way.

Yeah, that's more accurate.

The door of the classroom burst open and a jubilant-looking teacher all but bounded inside. She was about twenty-five, and was probably an inch or two shorter than Sam herself. The woman reminded Sam a little bit of her late grandmother: a little plump, a little dumpy, and extremely energetic. The teacher had a certain degree of radiant optimism about her, and it certainly showed in her ear-to-ear smile. She was wearing a long peach-colored skirt and a white blouse, and she held an armful of files in one hand and a coffee in the other.

She had dark skin, rosy cheeks, a head of puffy, frizzy black hair, and these unbelievably large coke-bottle glasses that looked like they'd sooner fall off her face then assist in her eyesight.

"Class!" She exclaimed suddenly, placing her stuff onto her desk in the front of the room and standing in front of the holographic wall. "Welcome to your first day back from fall break." She began. Sam thought her voice sounded pitchy and a little nauseating. She wasn't sure why, though, because no one else seemed bothered by it.

If she had been looking in the right direction, she would have seen the punk rocker's eye twitch in annoyance, and the black haired boy shift uncomfortably.

But Sam wasn't, so she didn't see it.

"I am Ms. Cooper," The teacher continued continued, gesturing to herself, "and I'm sure most of you know each other. However, I have been informed that we do, in fact, have a few new students." She smiled brightly, and Sam knew she was a little more than just " _informed."_ By the look of the teacher and the nature of the class, she probably was one of the many people to demand that the ghosts even attend a public school - _Casper High,_ specifically.

"But!" She said, raising her index finger. "I take it you three," Cooper looked at the three lone ghosts across the room from Sam and Tucker, "have been pretty much picked apart by now, am I correct?"

The punk rocker scoffed and the gypsy girl rolled her eyes. The black-haired boy cracked a smile and choked back a laugh.

"I'll take that as a yes," the teacher smirked at her three new students. "But, I was also made aware that we, in fact, have _another_ new student joining us today."

Sam felt the blood drain from her face.

Tucker elbowed her, " _helpfully."_ She didn't need to see his face to know he was smirking like the little shit he was.

Ms. Cooper looked at directly at Sam, in her seat _in the back of the room,_ and smiled. "Don't think you can sneak by your entire first day without even a _little bit_ of public embarrassment."

"Isn't that child abuse?" Sam asked before she could stop herself. She wanted to face palm. _Way to possibly make it worse, Sam,_ she thought to herself. _N_ _ice going._

Instead of lashing out at her and yelling about disrespect like Sam expected, Ms. Cooper surprised the class by laughing. "Don't worry," she said, "it's not bad, and I make _all_ my students do it, _at some point."_ She eyed the ghosts as she said that last part. Then, she put a secretive hand on the side of her mouth and whispered, "Plus, it's not illegal if you don't get caught."

"True enough." Sam retorted, gaining many wide-eyed stares throughout the class.

"Alright, Miss, can I get you to stand and say your name, and your birthday, please?"

 _That's it?_ Sam asked herself, _I'm underwhelmed._ "Uh, sure." Sam said as she stood up. "Um," She started, "My name's Sam Manson, and my birthday's on, well," She laughed nervously. Sam hated telling people her birthdate, but she didn't see how she was going to get out of this - other than lying. And she wasn't going to think about doing that, because there was too high of a chance of her getting caught. "February fourteenth."

"Ooooh," Ms. Cooper said immediately, followed by a series of laughs and obnoxious coos throughout the class. She could hear that asshole she called a close friend laughing his butt off in the desk beside her.

"Valentines Day," the teacher continued, smiling. "Looks like we have an Aquarius." Cooper crossed her arms and smirked at Sam, who didn't like where this conversation was starting to go.

"Aquarius," Cooper said, "Does anyone know the significance of it?"

A few students raised their hands. "Well, I'm going to answer anyway." Cooper stated, ignoring the hands. The students put down their hands with a collective huff of annoyance while the other kids just laughed.

"Aquarius is the eleventh sign of the zodiac. They say that those born under that sign have the social confidence, the will, and the ability needed to lead us into the new millennium. It's no surprise; too, I'd bet you've got a killer sense of humor, right? Probably frank and imaginative, as well. Sign up for any art classes?"

Sam felt her face heat up. What was going _on?_

"Independent and humanistic, too. Stubborn, but loyal. Future world leaders."

Sam glanced at Tucker, and he gave her a look that said that Ms. Cooper does this to everyone, and to just roll with it.

"Got any future plans, Sam?" Ms. Cooper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Um," Sam started, baffled by this whole exchange, "No, not really." She paused, thinking for a moment for continuing. "I'm more focused on what's going on _now,_ then what's going to happen years _from_ now."

It was true. With how hectic her life's been for the past six months, Sam's been more in the _now_ then she's been in ten years. She didn't want to think about the future. Miracle patients like her, so the doctors all told her, don't miraculously heal overnight like she had. There was a strong possibility that her illness come back with a vengeance. And if it got any worse than it already was, the possibility that she would live to see her twentieth birthday was more than slim.

"Spoken like a true Aquarius." Ms. Cooper said, clasping her hands together with a grin. "Too focused on the present to worry about the future. Makes for better decision-making, which leads to a better future whether the Aquarius knows it yet or not."

Sam huffed, fidgeting in her seat. She had a feeling she'd appreciate this teacher's "humor" if she weren't on the butt end of it.

"Now!" Cooper said. "Enough going on about Astrology, that's not why you all are here. You're here to learn about space, am I right?" She paused for a moment before finishing, "I'm right."

"If you were here _before_ fall break," Cooper cast a meaningful glance around the classroom, "you would know that we just took our chapter one exam."

Tucker scoffed from his spot beside Sam. Ah, so he remembered it well.

" _But,"_ Cooper continued, " _Since_ so many of you are new to this class, I see no reason why we can't just start again. Sound good?"

A series of varying teenaged grunts and noises rang throughout the room, but overall the general consensus approved the idea.

"Great!" Cooper chirped. "We'll just cover the basics again, but I think I'll make it a little bit more… _interactive_ than last time. A little more _inclusive_. After all," She smiled at the lone, secluded trio of ghosts in the corner, "we've got more than one solar system to study." The eccentric astronomy teacher straightened suddenly, as if struck with an idea. "You know what? How's about we kick this year off with a group project? Mix the pile a little bit, split all these different… groups… up!" She gestured in the general direction of all the clearly separated cliques scattered around the classroom.

No one was very excited about this idea, though, because the moment she started talking – and even slightly before – many students were moaning and groaning in disapproval. Many looked as though Cooper just ran over their dog or shot their grandmother. In some more extreme cases, both, much to Sam's personal amusement.

"Oh hush up, all of you." Cooper waved a hand to quiet the students. For some reason, the class _actually_ listened, but Sam wasn't surprised. Cooper, despite her obvious sense of humor and eccentric spirit, had this intimidating, "don't cross me" air about her. She was one of those teachers with whom you wanted to _stay_ in their good graces. "We can always take a traditional test. A pop-test. On material most of you haven't viewed before. _I'm_ the teacher here, and _I_ don't think that's fair, but I'll make you do it if you don't cooperate with me."

The remaining students that dared speak amongst themselves wandered into silence.

"Good," Cooper said. "Great. _Fantastic._ I'll pair you up, and we'll go over what this project is going to be _about."_

The following seven-and-a-half minutes were tedious and relatively boring. Sam only ever tuned in when she heard a name she knew from fifth grade being called out. She probably should have paid more attention though, because then she would have known the reason behind Tucker's smirking, and perhaps she would have caught the more-than-obvious wink Cooper sent in the duo's direction when she called their group.

"Sam, Tucker, Danny, you're a group." She said. Without any indication of any sort of nonverbal interaction with Tucker, Cooper continued talking into an abyss Sam had no mind to pay any sort of attention to.

Sam exchanged a glance with Tucker. Good God, _why_ was he smirking at her?

 _"What?"_ Sam mouthed and he continued to smirk. Sam elbowed him in the ribs. Hard. " _What?"_ She mouthed again, more forcefully this time.

Tucker, without changing that punch-worthy expression of his, took a stylus out of his pocket and quickly scrawled a note on his desk's touchpad.

Sam didn't even allow herself to wonder whatever the hell happened to traditional paper and pencils before reading what he wrote.

 _"Cooper is psychic."_

Sam gave him a questioning look. Cooper? Why was Cooper psychic?

She took Tucker's stylus and wrote exactly that.

 _"She paired us with Danny."_ Tucker's not so neatly scrawled words read. _"'Random,' my ass."_ Tucker paused for a moment before adding onto the note a quick _"lol"_ before Cooper was finally done talking.

Sam gave Tucker a meaningful look that clearly stated that this conversation wasn't over. Giving her a sideways half-smirk, Tucker pressed a button and deleted the messages written on his desk.

"Alright," Cooper was saying, "Break. Go. Grab your groups. Introduce yourselves. Exchange contact information. Do whatever teenagers do." Cooper waved a hand in dismissal. " _Go."_

All at once, everyone in the class was up and moving. Most people had to move across the room, however Sam and Tucker stayed in their exact spots.

Sam kicked her feet up onto the desk, and Tucker scoffed at his friend's antics. He pulled out his… _extremely_ modified PDA and started messing with it.

Sam had only begun to scroll through her _own_ phone before a voice - a low, boyish tenor - cut through the dull roar of unfocused teenagers around her. "Um…. Hi."

* * *

A/N: Ohhhhh you thought you hated me before, you probably really do now! I'm hilarious, you know it. Admit it. I also couldn't resist plopping some irony smack-dab into the middle of this chapter... I love doing that with AU stories.

Anyway, things are heating up, please leave a review on your way out! Pretty please with a cherry on top? Thanks!

Peace,

Rookey


	13. High-Five, Buddy

Aquarius

High-Five, Buddy

* * *

Till all the walls fall we'll just keep being strangers  
As the world rearranges  
Every blade, every seed, every ounce of green  
And the sunrise is a welcome thing  
But I wish it was more welcoming

 _The Airborne Toxic Event_

* * *

Sam's head snapped up at the voice, startled. She nearly missed Tucker's muffled laugh as her eyes snapped up to meet those of whoever had spoken.

She wasn't entirely sure who she was expecting, and to be completely honest, Sam shouldn't have been _nearly_ as surprised as she was.

The black haired ghost, apparently named Danny, sat in the desk in front of Sam and Tucker. He was smiling shyly at them, his blue button-up shirt slightly ruffled and his jet black hair looking like he had just stuck it out of a car window.

Now that Sam saw it up close, was his hair _moving?_ It looked like it. Like some sort of ever-present breeze consistently blew through it, giving the dark, glossy strands this perpetual wind-blown appearance. It was like the individual strands all collectively decided that gravity didn't apply to them and physics were a joke.

Sam thought it was one of the single coolest things she's seen in a long time. Definitely a hell of a lot cooler than those touchscreen lockers.

It was his eyes, though, that drew her immediate attention. She's continually seen this particular ghost throughout the day, and never have his eyes been _unnoticeable,_ but she didn't register just how prominent they actually were until this moment.

Sam remembered Tucker mentioning the word _cyan_ and suddenly she knew he couldn't have been more correct. There was a sort of glacial quality about the ghost's eyes, but it seemed surface-deep, for some reason. There was something else, though, that she couldn't put her finger on. Some underlying, otherworldly glow about them that made this otherwise normal looking boy stand out as being _clearly_ nonhuman.

And for some inexplicable reason, Sam could cross her heart and swear to hell and back that she's seen that same set of eyes _somewhere_ before.

"Oh." Sam stumbled over her words. She suddenly found it harder to speak, but she blamed it on the fact that she was talking to an _actual ghost._ Sam was talking to someone from _another planet._ Sure, she would freeze - but that was a given, wasn't it?

Of course, her brain chose to forget about her _previous_ interaction with a ghost earlier that day and revel in the moment.

"Um, h-hi, I'm Sam. Sam Manson, and that's Tucker Foley." Sam cursed the way her voice shook as she stuttered her way through that statement. Good God, she was _Sam Manson,_ not some alien-obsessed sci-fi fangirl. She was _far_ more mature than _that._ Sam that jabbed a finger to her friend beside her, who in turn jabbed his own thumb at himself, proclaiming that he was in fact Tucker Foley.

Playing off her earlier lack of articulation as a fluke, Sam stuck out her hand to Danny. "It's nice to meet you." She said with a smile.

Danny, though, just grinned nervously and eyed her hand. He didn't make any move to shake it, but instead just looked thoroughly confused. His shocking eyes met Sam's, and the reason for his incertitude suddenly dawned on her.

"Right." Sam said, withdrawing her hand. "You shake my hand with yours. Like this, see?" She turned to Tucker and shook his hand in demonstration, who, for his part, looked absolutely befuddled by the whole exchange. "Simple." Sam concluded, breaking the handshake with Tucker and turning back to Danny. "It's a lame formality, but it works well enough. It's nice to meet you." Sam tried again, holding out her hand.

Danny's face broke into a genuine smile and he took her hand and shook it with a general, "And yourself."

The boy looked positively thrilled at the prospect of learning some other human custom he had somehow overlooked while growing up among ghosts. Sam didn't know what to make of it, but mostly she just found it endearing.

"I don't know if I'd call it _lame,_ per se," Danny finally said, that _to die for-_ that _smile_ still on his face as he broke the handshake. Sam, as discreetly as she could, shook out her hand a bit and rubbed it on her pant leg. If there was one thing this ghost was, it was _cold._ His skin was like ice, and shaking hands with him felt like plunging her hand wrist-deep into a bucket of snowmelt. "But it's definitely _different._ " Danny finished.

"What's different about it? What do you guys do?" Tucker asked.

Danny cocked his head to the side. The expression on his face was hard to read, but "surprise" would be the first word that would come to mind.

"Something wrong?" Sam asked. His silence worried her - the last thing she wanted to do was offend him. Offending rude-ass humans, she could do. Offending ghosts by disrespecting and disgracing their culture, however, was the _last_ thing Sam wanted.

"Oh, no, I - it's nothing." Danny stuttered with a sheepish and almost unbearably shy laugh, "It's just that no one's asked me that before." Without giving them the chance to interrupt, Danny drew his eyes away from Sam and directly addressed Tucker. "It's still kind of stupid, but it's what my people do, I guess." Danny held out his hand to Tucker, with his palm facing towards him. For lack of a better description, it looked like Danny was wordlessly asking for a high-five. The ghost flexed his fingers slightly. "You kind of do the same thing, and we touch fingers." Danny demonstrated with his other hand, his fingers lightly touching before breaking apart.

"So like... finger high-five," Tucker said, touching his fingertips to Danny's. "Makes sense. I like it."

Danny laughed. Now a _high-five,_ he was familiar with. He never thought of his people's regular formality as a "finger high-five" before. Perhaps he needed to reevaluate a few things in his life through a lens of humor, if only to make things more interesting.

"So, you're new here, right?" Danny asked after a moment's pause, looking at Sam. "I mean, it seemed like you were. I thought you were."

Sam chuckled, "What, was announcing my zodiac sign and my future to the entire class and setting me up for a year of public humiliation over my birthday not obvious enough?"

"Hey, you never know!" Danny defended, giving his own playful smile. "I was just wondering. Don't humans sometimes switch schools? I don't know what that's called. _Šaltilo lernejoj?_ "

Danny's speech broke and he covered a hand over his mouth. "I didn't mean to say that," he muttered. "I'm _so_ sorry."

Sam waved off his mistake, thinking of what Jazz told her that morning. Tucker just looked confused as he started rubbing his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. A headache must have been coming on. A frontal headache, focused right around the eyes. It was like wearing a pair of off-prescription glasses for too long. It would eventually develop into a migraine. Sam used to get them whenever she would try to learn Esperanto. But now...

"Don't worry about it," Sam said, "I don't think Cooper cares that much." She glanced at the dark-skinned woman, who was watching their group diligently from behind a hardcover book. What did that say, " _Twilight"?_ Sam vaguely remembered her mother reading something like it - a vintage book with a pair of white hands holding an apple on the cover. When Sam asked what it was, Palma just scolded her for not appreciating the classics.

Which struck Sam as odd. Her first thought was that it was a cookbook.

But Cooper didn't look mad, or even perturbed at Danny's unintentional code switching in the slightest. In fact, she had this expression adorning her face that Sam couldn't quite explain. It was something along the lines of glee, but the reasons behind such a look were unknown to Sam.

"And the word you're looking for is ' _transferring.'"_ Sam continued, disregarding whatever look and/or secret message Cooper was trying to telepathically communicate to them. "And no, actually, I didn't transfer from another school. I've just been... _sick._ " She couldn't come up with a better word, even though _sick_ was a deathly understatement.

Sam scoffed internally. _Literally._

Danny's eyes widened. "Wait," he started, "were _you_ the one on the news a while back?"

"You were on the news?" Tucker asked, giving Sam a look.

"You didn't know that?" Sam asked Tucker, who just responded with a look that read, _of fucking course I didn't know that, why the hell would I be questioning it if I did?_

"Well, yeah." Sam said a little sheepishly. Her voice dropped several octaves because she didn't want other people to hear what she was saying. To this day, she was still mortified that her parents insisted on a news story and she hasn't been able to hear the end of it since her miraculous recovery.

"About six months back, my parents wanted to run a story about me on some news channel no one watches. I don't know why - I think it was a publicity stunt on their part or a cry for sympathy. _Not_ something I approved of. But yeah, they did it. Told the _entire town_ I was sick. It was _fan-fucking-tastic."_ Sam finished that statement in a general glare at the world in front of her, refusing to look at her new - and old - friends.

"Yeah," Danny muttered softly, "I just remember there being a report about someone being sick. I just managed to claim the television from my sister in our containment unit when they ran the story a while ago. I was wondering if that person ever recovered." Danny shot Sam a sheepish smile. It was an innocent grin, really. No, innocent wasn't the right word. Neither was sheepish. In fact, the smile wasn't related to anything along those lines at all. "Guess I got my answer."

Only a few seconds after he said that did Sam realize something.

He wasn't donning an innocent smile. It wasn't sheepish, or shy, or cheeky, or even endearing.

No, that was a well-hidden, minuscule, almost entirely masked _guilty_ smile.

What on Earth and beyond did Danny Fenton have to be _guilty_ for?

Sam's father, and loath was she to dare admit this even in the confines of her own head or the words on this screen, was the head of security in the Ghost Zone. He had years of experience in the CIA beforehand and a background in the FBI that dated back even before that. He even had military experience, but you'd never know it by the polo shirts and the boating shoes he wore every day. He was a criminal's man, the type of guy that played bad-cop in the world's scariest interrogations.

Sam knew, probably better than just about anyone else, that if someone showed even the slightest semblance of guilt, even in the most random of times, in the most ordinary of scenarios, in the most casual of interactions, then they, beyond the shadow of a doubt, had something to be guilty for.

That means that Danny Fenton was guilty of _something._

And from the way he looked and the way he sounded, it meant that he wasn't _just_ guilty for something. "Guilty" could suggest a vague feeling in the pit of one's stomach that indicated that an action was immoral. It was easily ignored, easily stifled, and easily concealed.

No, there was something eating Danny alive.

And Sam wouldn't be a Manson if she didn't find out what it was.

* * *

A/N: Hi! First interaction with Danny in a long line of interactions with Danny. So, here's something: QUESTION TIME! I had this alternate summary for this story on my profile for a while now and I don't know if I'm starting to like it better than this one. It goes like this:

We've always told our kids to reach for the stars, but we never anticipated that the stars would come to us. That is, until they did. When the aliens came, the first thing the government did was lock them away in Amity Park. And Sam Manson won't take this injustice lying down. She's determined to throw a wrench in the government's plans and flip a couple people off in the process.

The question here is, which do you prefer? Which do you think goes along with the story better? What do you think sounds more interesting for new readers? Thanks fam :)

I hope you enjoyed, and please drop a review with your thoughts. Have a great day/night!

Peace

Rookey


	14. The Bell That Was Just Too Loud

Aquarius

The Bell That Was Just Too Loud

* * *

You never know when you're gonna meet someone  
And your whole wide world in a moment comes undone

\- _Daughtry_

* * *

It didn't take long for the three teenagers in the far back left corner of the classroom to hit it off. Actually, from about the second they began interacting, Sam, Tucker, and Danny just didn't stop talking. It was like they couldn't, even if they wanted to.

Good thing they didn't want to.

The dull roar of students rolled throughout the classroom in waves and it was immediately evident that no one was about to shut up any time soon.

By the second half of class, it became very clear that Cooper wasn't even going to _try_ to reel in her students. She knew, probably better than most teachers at Casper High, that her students weren't going to listen to her even if she brought out a megaphone and started screaming into it. At some point, she scrawled onto the board some nonsensical scribbles Sam automatically copied down in her notebook. It was some homework Sam could look up later. Something about planets. Something about space.

Something like that.

But for the moment, Sam was way too absorbed in her conversation with Tucker and Danny to care.

Sam was still trying to wrap her head around it. She was talking to an _alien._ She was holding an actual conversation with someone _not from the planet Earth._ Danny wasn't even from their solar system. She didn't know much about where he came from - the press and the government were very good at either warping or suppressing the truth behind Earth's very first extra-terrestrial visitors - but she had every intention to find out everything she possibly could.

Already, Danny was proving an armful of conspiracy theories Sam heard thrown about over the last ten years wrong. She'd only talked to him for a solid twenty minutes now, and he was beginning to shake everything she thought she knew about the aliens. Everything she was taught to believe since the crash.

And proving right everything she's _seen._

Whether Sam wanted to admit it or not, paranoia had built up a barricade around many of the people she knew. Pastors and Bible-thumpers shouted left and right that these ghosts, these _people,_ were demons sent from hell - some evil threat from above. Demons from the sky, that made a _ton_ of sense.

Others thought the ghosts were no more people than they were a _sign -_ a foreshadowing of the rapture and a symbol of destruction. Sam remembered in the early years of them being here, just a short time after the Great Crash and when all the chaos began to die down, people started quoting Revelations - sending messages and proclaiming that disasters of apocalyptic proportions were on the horizons.

The arrival of the ghosts would be humanity's downfall.

Of course, none of it happened. It was all a bunch of bull. Even when Sam was that young, she knew it, too.

That paranoia, though, morphed into a general belief that ghosts were these evil, scary beings. They spoke in tongues that caused migraines, they could do things mere humans could never so much as _dream_ of. Their evolution was off the charts and their advanced, intricate biology put humanity's collective superiority complex to shame.

And here was Danny Fenton, son of the two _leaders of the ghost race,_ holding a conversation with her. A _pleasant_ one, of all things. He was a little overly shy, a little timid, and a little sheepish, but Sam could understand why. She understood his situation.

But Sam hadn't forgotten that guilty look he had on his face when she brought up her health - of all things - but she decided to let it slide... if only for the time being.

She could revisit that later.

Now, though, none of it mattered. What mattered right now was the genuine interest in Danny's stunning eyes as he listened to Tucker rattle off about the city's "most famous" eatery.

"I'm telling you," Tucker was saying, waving his arms about animatedly, "The Nasty Burger is the absolute _bomb._ Their burgers are practically the ninth wonder of the _world!"_

"Really?" Danny said, the expression on his face growing excited. "I'd love to go sometime - I've never had a burger before. But I've heard a lot about them."

Sam, who at this point was glaring at Tucker for giving that slaughterhouse so much praise, stopped short. She stared at Danny, surprised. Tucker's expression mirrored her own - but only _slightly_ more exaggerated.

Actually, there was no "slightly" about it at all. His jaw had dropped far enough to catch flies and his eyes were about as big as dinner plates. It looked like someone had just told Tucker that he defended from royalty - that his ancestors were Pharaohs or something just as unbelievable.

"You... you _what?"_ Tucker said, his voice nearly a whisper.

Danny shrugged, shooting the two an embarrassed smile. "Never had one before. S'not like they've got a decent menu in the Ghost Zone."

"That... that _reeks,"_ Tucker said, making a face. "That actually, officially, absolutely _sucks."_

"Glad I'm not the only one thinking it." Danny shrugged.

"What else have you been missing out on?!" Tucker suddenly exclaimed. He seemed to realize that if Danny hasn't had a burger before, then that could very well mean he's never had a variety of other human delicacies.

"What do you usually eat?" Sam asked before Danny could respond to Tucker's question. She wasn't as fired up about this issue as she could be - for all she knew, maybe the GIW were honoring the ghost's culture. Maybe the government respected them enough to allow them to make their own food - their own recipes, their own traditional dishes? Maybe the ghosts had natural, different dietary needs than humans? Wishful thinking, Sam knew, but as much as she hated the GIW, she always sought to see the best in everyone.

"You know," Danny said, addressing Sam first. "I'm not really sure. It's food - that's kind of the perspective everyone takes. It all kind of tastes the same. We get a lot of rice and beans, I think. There's other stuff, too." At this, Danny cringed. His fists clenched together, before his face wiped blank, growing pale as a sheet. He wasn't smiling anymore. "Not as great, but I'm not complaining."

Okay, never mind then. _Now,_ Sam was fired up. She had a hair-trigger fight response - Sam's had it since she was a kid. She was a smartass at heart - a feminist, a born journalist and an avid vocal activist. So, naturally, when she heard what Danny was saying, when she _saw_ Danny's grimace and sensed his disgust _-_ she was livid.

"They're giving you _prison food?"_ Sam nearly exploded, shocking both Danny and Tucker. "Rice and beans, stuff that tastes the same - that's prison food. Do you guys have a choice?"

"Um... no?" Danny's answer came out as a question. He was suddenly a little more uncomfortable than he was before. His gaze flickered between Sam and Tucker. "I haven't really thought much of it. I mean, they let us cook for ourselves, I guess. All the food's gotta come from somewhere, and usually it's not that exciting. I... I didn't think it was a big deal."

"It's a big deal, dude. A _huge_ one," Tucker said. "I'm a foodie. If you can't tell, Ms. Save-the-Animals-by-Going-Vegan over here is too. Sooner or later dude, we're gonna have to educate you on all this."

"Do I get a choice?"

"No." Was Sam and Tucker's simultaneous response. Danny, to Sam's relief, cracked a smile. Good, she was halfway certain her and Tucker's... _abrasiveness_ would scare him off. That was the _last_ thing she wanted to do.

"Sounds like a plan to me," Danny said, a genuine smile coming through. It wasn't a shy, half-smile. Not some awkward, nervous grin, not some smear of a grimace or a lopsided smirk. A _smile._ It was like the curtains had been pulled back and suddenly the room was alive with sunlight. Sam got the sense that this moment, this conversation, was somehow significant for him. For all three of them.

Has Danny ever had friends before?

Some part of her wanted to reject that notion. Most parts of her, actually. How could someone like him _not_ have friends? Danny Fenton was - if Sam's gut proved right - pretty magnetic. She thought it was the eyes that did it, at first. They were about as hypnotic as the light in a moth trap. They drew people towards them. But now...

Well, Danny _did_ have a nice smile. A straight row of shiny pearly-whites. Slightly sharpened canines, typical of any ghost. The faint impression of dimples on his cheeks. He had freckles, too, Sam noticed now that she was paying attention. There was a thin layer of them scattered across his nose and cheeks like stars in the sky.

Sam fought to keep the blush from washing over her face. No, you know what? Sam Manson was _not_ attracted to this ghost. _Absolutely not._ She refused. Sure, he was good-looking - in a boyish, awkward kind of way - but Sam wasn't about to be attracted to him.

She _wasn't_.

At least, so she kept telling herself.

"Just because we haven't gone over this yet," Tucker started, "Classes for tomorrow, anyone?"

Sam flipped open her folder. " _We_ have been over this, Tuck. But I've got Bio, Fine Art, gym, and free."

"Well yeah," Tucker said. "We've got astronomy, bio and english. How could I forget?"

"Because you weren't paying attention the first time," Sam chuckled. "Danny?" She prompted.

He quickly flipped open to his own schedule. "Uh... Biology, Economics, Astrophysics, Report. Guess we've got Bio together."

Tucker laughed. "That's gonna be a _fun_ class. Astrophysics? Dude, I heard that class is _tough."_

"Shouldn't be too bad," Danny said, smirking. "I mean, I'm kind of into the whole 'space' thing. Always wanted to be an kosmonaŭ- _astronaut_. I can probably handle it - as long as they don't start bring up super bizarre theories like aliens or something _._ That's too weird of a concept for me. Too... _out of this world."_

Sam couldn't help it, then. She started laughing. _Hard._ She was wheezing, and she thought she was going to fall out of her chair.

Good God... he was _funny,_ too. He was conversational - not at all what Sam expected. But she should have, though. Danny was a _Fenton,_ after all. And that's what Fentons _did._

Tucker was barking in laughter right along side her. "I can't _believe_ you actually just said that," He choked out.

Danny just shrugged, chuckling lightly himself. "'It's not a good pun unless everyone in the room wants to kill you,'" He quoted, shaking his head. "Never thought I'd be learning about space on an alien planet. Go figure."

" _C'est la vie,_ " Sam says, her own laughter dying out at hearing Danny's words. Right. Sam spends so much time thinking of ghosts as the aliens that she didn't often visit the idea that they're on a planet almost completely foreign to them.

The reminder filed itself away at the back of her mind as ammo for the future. Sam knew she'd need it, eventually.

"I think that's Italian. No, French," Danny muttered to himself under his breath. It was so quiet, Sam struggled to hear it. She thought she knew what he said, though.

She was about to ask him to repeat that, just for good measure, when Tucker spoke up. Apparently, he was completely oblivious to Danny having said anything at all. "What's report? Never heard of it."

"It's for APGIP," Danny said. "bi-daily report period. Basically, it's just all the guards and the police and Lancer telling us how to act more human."

 _Act human?_ No, how about act like _themselves?_

"What does _that_ mean?" Tucker demanded. He didn't sound offended - not in the least bit. His tone mirrored what Sam was feeling: genuine concern and borderline anger at the prospect of them being told to act human - as if they weren't good enough for society. As if you had to be _human_ to fit in on Earth.

 _Newsflash,_ Sam wanted to scream, _the planet doesn't_ belong _to anyone._

Danny exhaled sharply. His face contorted slightly in irritation and he plastered a faux smile on his face. It was visibly forced - clearly, Danny hated the idea of a report period as much as Sam and Tucker. "Looking like humans and talking like humans isn't good enough for them, I guess."

Sam opened her mouth to say something else when the school bell suddenly tore through the air like a bullhorn in a waiting room. Sam winced, her hands reaching for her ears. Were school bells always that loud?

What she missed, however, was Danny's similar reaction and Tucker's baffled look at the two of them. The computer geek didn't say anything about it, though. He shrugged off the reactions of his friends. Newbies.

"That means school's over, right?" Danny asked. He had no idea that time could pass so quickly - it was already two forty-five?

"And we're free for the rest of the day." Tucker confirmed, stuffing his things into his bag and standing up. He began walking towards the classroom door.

" _You're_ free for the rest of the day," Danny corrected, pointing a pen at Tucker from his spot. He and Sam grabbed their books and caught up with Tucker. " _I,_ however, gotta report back at the Specter Speeder at two fifty-five. I should probably head there now, but I'll see you guys tomorrow?"

"Is that a trick question?" Tucker asked.

"We'll meet up with you tomorrow." Sam stated in her best matter-of-fact tone, raising an eyebrow at Tucker for his lack of clarity. That seemed to be the trend with ghosts in general: be concise and clear, and things wouldn't be misinterpreted.

Danny shot the two of them a grateful smile. "Well... thanks, guys. It was good to meet some..."

"Non-assholes?" Sam interjected as Danny trailed off.

"Non-assholes," Danny confirmed with a smirk. "Definitely not assholes."

* * *

A/N: And thus goes the trio's first complete conversation.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! To anyone and everyone who celebrates it. To everyone else, happy holidays!

Gotta do some more writing on this story, but I've been getting caught up with my other one called Heart of a Hero. Which, by the way, I would _totally_ recommend if you're into Young Justice crossovers and angst. I'm also working on another fic called " _The Doctor Said He Should Be Dead"_ which is a long title that I would normally shorten, but it rhymes. So it's staying. There's more info in my bio if you're interested.

I think that's about all I've got today.

Peace

Rookey


	15. Stomach, Meet Floor

Aquarius

Stomach, Meet Floor

* * *

 _Since it's been so damn long:_ After miraculously recovering from a debilitating and otherwise fatal illness, Sam Manson's first day of high school has been anything but normal. Reuniting with old friends and figuring out high school would have been tricky enough, if you didn't add in the aliens. With the discovery that she's able to speak nearly perfect Esperanto, the alien's native language (and something previously thought impossible for humans to learn), Sam's slowly starting to accept that not everything's as it seems. But at least she met some halfway decent aliens throughout the day - new friends are always a plus, whether they're human or not.

But now comes the tricky part:

 _Telling Valerie._

* * *

Here I am, give me something I could follow  
So I can find my way out from the shadows  
Raise your voice cause the time is now or never  
And if we have to fall, we'll fall together.

\- _The Temper Trap_

* * *

The whole way back to the hospital, Sam's mind was buzzing with activity. That was one _hell_ of a first day of school. She _met a ghost._ And not just one ghost - _two._ The _Fenton's kids._

And there weren't any fights. No harassment, no bullying - _nothing_. Sam figured it was a matter of time though, before some of the students at Casper decided to get a little cocky and give the ghosts trouble for something or another.

Well, Sam promised herself she would say something if she saw it happen. What was two years in the grand scheme of things? She wouldn't see half those people ever again once high school was over. Sam's never cared before about what people thought of her. Why should she start now?

Man, she had a lot to tell Valerie. _A_ _lot._ Sam's former roommate made her _swear_ to give her a full report as soon as the day was over and Sam was never one to break promises.

Sam walked for a good solid ten blocks before she came to Saint Elm's Bridge. Like always, she stopped. She glared daggers at the prison that stood like a big, angry blackhead on the outskirts of the West End, regarding the parked armed Specter Speeder from this morning with a scowl, before moving on.

When she got to the hospital - a large, boxy, stainless steel and glass building with more than a little bit of prideful vegetation - she burst through the doors. Of course, in her usual Sam-like way.

The receptionist, a kind, middle-aged woman named Cathy, was the only one working in the lobby at that moment. She didn't so much as jump. In fact, she hardly looked up before she said: "Just go on up, Sam."

"Thanks, Cathy!" Sam said, causing the few people seated in the waiting area to shoot dirty looks her way for not having to sign in. Sam has been in and out of here so many times within the past several months that it was almost redundant to sign in and out every time she dropped by. Sam was a hospital _regular._ She practically _lived_ there.

To be more concise: she _did_ live there.

Sam jumped onto an elevator and watched the numbers trickled by as it sped up to the fifth floor - the in-patient floor. Or as Sam likes to call it, the "Inn-patient floor." It was like an inn, but everyone was inpatient to leave. Sam thought she was clever as shit when she came up with it.

When the elevator doors opened, Sam was was suddenly hit with the smell of popcorn. Popcorn? That actually sounded good. Shaking off her sudden craving for it, Sam took one short trip down a hall and a sharp right before she stood with her face planted in front of the door her and Valerie shared for so long.

It was a little... _decorated,_ with "CAUTION: ZOMBIES AHEAD" tape stapled around the boarder and crudely drawn pictures of Sam and Valerie taped to the outside... curtesy of Sam herself.

They were caricatures more than anything else. Both the girls' features were ridiculously exaggerated. Sam gave herself massive eyebrows, a Wednesday Addams widow's peak, and an over-long and sloping nose because she thought it was funny. Valerie requested ridiculously large cheeks, enormous lips, and hair that filled up her entire page. It was a funny door, and one would certainly know which room was _theirs_ if one cared enough to look.

 _Oh,_ Sam thought. _Valerie has the popcorn._ She could smell it - it was definitely coming from their room. If Sam could smell it from down the hall, how much was Valerie making? Did she burn it? Did she have friends over? Sure, Valerie and Sam didn't know many people outside the hospital, but the other inn-patients weren't all _un_ friendly.

Regardless of who might be on the other side of the door, Sam didn't bother to knock. She just barged through. " _And she's back!"_ Sam exclaimed. She and Valerie had only been talking about high school for _years_ now, so this was kind of a revolutionary moment.

"She's back!" Valerie echoed from her bed, where she had been seated surrounded by science fiction books and her open laptop. Valerie had a fistful of popcorn halfway between the mid-sized bowl and her mouth.

 _Huh,_ Sam thought, _not nearly as much popcorn as I thought._ She wondered vaguely how bad her subconscious would make her feel if she just went up and stole a solid handful out of the bowl. The smell was _really_ strong, and _really_ good.

"How was it!?" Valerie demanded, dropping the popcorn back in the bowl and closing the dog-eared sci-fy book she had been reading. "Good? Bad? Ugly? I want all the details - leave nothing out."

"Wasn't planning to," Sam stated.

So, Sam went off. She went on about the school and how absurdly overfunded it was. She detailed her reunion with Tucker, to which Valerie shot her an unsurprised look at finding out Tucker turned into a hipster. Sam went into her skipped first period, and seeing the ghosts for the first time and hearing Lancer's speech.

"He planned it," Sam said. "He condemned everyone for skipping class, but he had a speech prepared. Go figure."

"'Course," Valerie said. "Welcome to the world of hypocritical adults. At least he's not an actual teacher though. Right?"

"I don't think so," Sam thought, "I know he taught there at one point, but I don't think he'll take it up again. Hope not."

"Better you than me." Valerie teased.

"Right. Oh," Sam started, "I almost forgot. I met a ghost today. Two, actually." Sam didn't actually forget about it. She was just upping the shock factor.

And her attempts were successful. " _What?"_ Valerie exploded. "Sam! Why didn't you lead with that?! Never mind, don't answer that. Who?! What were they like? What did they say? Are they planning world domination? If I felt like getting up, I'd hit you. You know that, right?"

"Why do you think I'm not in arms-reach?" Sam joked. "But you'll never believe it. I met the Fenton's kids today. Both of them."

"The Fenton's kids?" Valerie asked after a moment. She blinked. "The _Fenton's kids?_ Sam, are you being real? You've _gotta_ be kidding me."

"I'm not," Sam said. Her face split into a grin as a wave of excitement hit her. "Valerie, I'm not. I'm serious! I've got second period with Jazz and last period with Danny. It's _surreal."_

"I can't _believe_ you!" Valerie glared playfully at Sam. "Seriously, when you turn eighteen, you're buying my lottery tickets. This is ridiculous."

"It's all in the wrists," Sam said, flexing her wrists and grinning at Valerie. "But I don't know how it happened. I think all transfer students and new kids have to take the same classes, because I've got a ghost in my third period class too. Now that I think about it... I've got Bio with Danny tomorrow, too..."

"Wonder how you figured that out..." Valerie wondered idly. Then she stopped short. "Wait. How _did_ you figure that out?"

Sam grinned sheepishly. "Danny, Tucker, and I are in a group for my Astronomy class. Small groups for some project. I don't know what it's about. Something about space."

"When you said you met them, I thought you meant you _saw_ them or said _hi_ to them," Valerie said, "I didn't know you actually held a conversation with them! Sam! I need to know these things!" Valerie sighed. "What goes, goes I guess. But first things first, tell me... were they hot?"

Sam raised an eyebrow at Valerie. " _They?"_

Valerie shrugged nonchalantly, but there was a challenge in her eyes, "That's right - _they._ Were _they_ hot? Nobody's ever seen the Fenton's kids before. They're always in the Ghost Zone."

Sam regarded Valerie with calculating violet eyes. " _They_ were, actually." Sam felt her face heat up once she realized what she said. She didn't know how else to say it, though. "Well, objectively-"

"-From an _artistic_ viewpoint, right, Sam?" Valerie cut her off with a smirk.

"Exactly. From an _artistic, objective_ viewpoint, _yes_ both of them were attractive. I wasn't really looking at Jazz in that light and I didn't get to talk to her for very long, but Danny's well..." Sam trailed off with a shrug. She wasn't attracted to him. She _wasn't._ The fact that her face was heating up again meant _nothing._ "Well, he's not _bad-looking."_

"Good to know." Valerie stated with a sly look in her eyes.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" Sam asked in a light, playful tone, but there was a serious note in it.

"What's there to tell?" Valerie retorted. She waved her hands through the air in a dramatic half-circle before saying, in an exaggerated, sarcastic-y voice, " _Bisexual."_

To say that Sam was even remotely jostled by her friend's proclamation would be a fatal overstatement. Although this was news to her, Sam had absolutely no problem with it at all. But she could tell that Valerie was concerned - she's known her best friend for long enough to recognize when she was nervous, and what she did to cover it up. Valerie Gray wasn't one to show weakness. The cockier she acted, the more freaked out she really was.

"Sweet." Sam stated casually. "You'll probably meet them at some point. Jazz... wants to talk more, later. And I'm pretty sure Danny, Tucker, and I hit it off last period. I'll drag 'em both to the hospital if it's the last thing I do."

" _Please_ do." Valerie said. She was visibly relieved - her shoulders sagged, the sneer faded from her face, and her clenched fists relaxed. Sam noticed all of this - but she didn't say anything. "I've got so many questions, it's absurd." Then, something occurred to her. "Oh! Sam! Since you're being super social with the aliens, did you ask about the _kid?"_

"Greenhouse Boy?" Sam asked. Her thoughts flashed to that night again - to _him._ The expression on his face. The bright green blood on the floor. The still, lifeless body of a six-year-old boy lying facedown in the dirt. Sam shuddered. "I don't see the point, Val. The kid's dead. Plus, it's not like he ever told me his name - why are you shaking your head?"

And shaking her head, she was. It looked like Valerie was attempting to make her head into a propeller. Sam almost thought it was going to fly off the girl's body. "You _have_ to ask, Sam. Trust me on this, seriously. If you don't trust me on anything else, trust me on this. I _know_ that the kid's been eating at you for _ten years._ You deserve to at least get some closure - find out who he is, who his family is."

" _Is?"_ Sam said. She was nothing if not observant. And Sam knew her English - she was an avid book fanatic and turned Valerie onto reading at the start of what wold have been their freshman year. And Sam knew that you didn't talk about the dead in the present tense. They were _dead -_ they existed in the past.

As that word left her mouth, something changed in Valerie. Her demeanor changed. Her face wiped blank of emotion, except for the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Her posture was stiffer, but not out of stress or caution like Sam expected.

It was something else.

"Well," Valerie started, pushing a button on the laptop perched on a stack of books beside her. "I think you should ask about him... because I don't think he's dead."

* * *

A/N: _Ohmygod._ It's been so damn long. I'm so sorry. Life's gotten real fam, I'm officially a jobless high school graduate, so that's what I've been spending my time trying to fix. In the meantime, here's the next chapter. I included a summary just to recap the plot so far but that probably won't happen often/again. To note: if you've read my other story " _Heart of a Hero",_ I'm working on an update for that, but it's not prewritten like this one (which makes my lack of an update even _more_ dumb), and I've been working on some rebuilding for the plot, and some stylistic changes with the actual "writing" part.

Please feel free to drop your thoughts in the review section on your way out, and I think that's all I have for you today.

Peace,

Rookey


End file.
